amertcan  Commontoealti^js* 


CONNECTICUT. 


c- 


3llnicrican  <Conimonlucaltf)jef 


CONNECTICUT 


BIMO:^ 


A  STUDY  OF  A  COMMONWEALTH-DEMOCRACY 


ALEXANDER   JOHNSTON 


With  a  Supplementary  Chapter  by  Ctive  Day,  Assistant  Professor 
of  Economic  History  in  Yale  University 


BOSTON    AND    NEW   YORK 
HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN   COMPANY 


Copyright,  1887, 
By  ALEXANDER  JOHNSTON. 

Copyright,  1903, 
By  HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 

All  rights  reserved. 


p 


L 


To 
TIMOTHY  DWIGHT, 

PRESIDENT  OF  YALE   UNIVERSITY, 


J6 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA' 

SAiNTA  liARUARA 


PUBLISHEES'  NOTE. 


In  issuing  a  new  edition  of  Connecticut,  it  has 
seemed  desirable  to  add  a  supplementary  chapter 
dealing  with  the  history  of  Connecticut  since  the 
Civil  War.  This  chapter  has  been  written  by 
Clive  Day,  Assistant  Professor  of  Economic  His- 
tory in  Yale  University. 

4  Park  St.,  September,  1903. 


PREFACE. 


This  volume  is  not  meant  to  deal  mainly  with 
the  antiquarian  history  of  Connecticut,  with  the 
achievements  of  Connecticut  men  and  women,  or 
with  those  biographical  details  which  so  often 
throw  the  most  instructive  side-lights  on  local  his- 
tory. These  fields  have  been  explored  so  thor- 
oughly by  abler  hands  that  it  would  be  presump- 
tion for  the  writer  to  enter  them,  unless  to  take 
advantage  of  the  materials  thus  stored  up.  The 
volume  is  one  of  a  "  Commonwealth  Series,"  and 
it  aims  to  take  the  history  of  Connecticut  from 
another  side.  Its  purpose  is  to  present  certain 
features  in  the  development  of  Connecticut  which 
have  influenced  the  general  development  of  the 
State  system  in  this  country,  and  of  the  United 
States,  and  may  be  grouped  as  follows  :  — 

I.  Connecticut's  town  system  was,  by  a  fortu- 
nate concurrence  of  circumstances,  even  more  in- 
dependent of  outside  control  than  that  of  Massa- 
chusetts; the  principle  of  local  government  had 
here  a  more  complete  recognition  ;  and,  in  the 
form  in  which  it  has  done  best  service,  its  begin- 
ning was  in  Connecticut. 


viii  PREFACE. 

II.  The  first  conscious  and  deliberate  effort  on 
this  continent  to  establish  the  democratic  princi- 
ple in  control  of  government  was  the  settlement 
of  Connecticut ;  and  her  constitution  of  1639,  the 
first  written  and  democratic  constitution  on  rec- 
ord, was  the  starting-point  for  the  democratic  de- 
velopment which  has  since  gained  control  of  all 
our  commonwealths,  and  now  makes  the  essential 
feature  of  our  commonwealth  government. 

III.  Democratic  institutions  enabled  the  people 
of  Connecticut  to  maintain  throughout  their  colo- 
nial history  a  form  of  government  so  free  from 
crown  control  that  it  became  really  the  exemplar 
of  the  rights  at  which  all  the  colonies  finally 
aimed. 

IV.  Connecticut,  being  mainly  a  federation  of 
towns,  with  neither  so  much  of  the  centrifugal 
force  as  in  Rhode  Island,  nor  so  much  of  the  cen- 
tripetal force  as  in  other  colonies,  maintained  for 
a  century  and  a  half  that  union  of  the  democratic 
and  federative  ideas  which  has  at  last  come  to 
mark  the  whole  United  States. 

V.  The  Connecticut  delegates  in  the  conven- 
tion of  1787,  by  another  happy  concurrence  of  cir- 
cumstances, held  a  position  of  unusual  influence  ; 
the  frame  of  their  commonwealth  government, 
with  its  equal  representation  of  towns  in  one 
branch  and  its  general  popular  representation  in 
the  other,  had  given  them  a  training  which  ena- 
bled them  to  bend  the  form  of  our  national  con* 


PREFACE.  ix 

Btitution  into  a  corresponding  shape  ;  and  the  pe- 
culiar constitution  of  our  congress,  in  the  different 
bases  of  the  senate  and  house  of  representatives, 
was  thus  the  result  of  Connecticut's  long  main- 
tenance of  a  federative  democracy. 

VI.  The  first  great  effort  at  westward  coloniza- 
tion, in  the  Wyoming  country,  was  managed  by 
Connecticut  through  her  traditional  system  of  free 
towns  ;  and  the  example  is  enough  to  account  for 
the  subsequent  power  of  this  principle  in  the  or- 
ganization of  the  great  Northwest. 

VII.  Individual  capacity  and  energy,  the  natu- 
ral fruit  of  a  democratic  system,  have  enabled  the 
people  of  Connecticut  to  survive  and  prosper  un- 
der the  industrial  revolution  of  later  times,  and  to 
show  that  a  commonwealth  almost  without  natural 
advantages,  and  forced  to  rely  almost  entirely  on 
the  conversion  of  foreign  products  into  other  forms, 
may  reach  the  highest  degree  of  prosperity  through 
the  individual  mechanical  genius  of  her  people. 

For  these  reasons,  the  writer  thinks  that  Con- 
necticut has  a  claim  to  a  high  place  among  char- 
acteristic commonwealths ;  and  that  the  antiqua- 
rian, biographical,  and  other  features  which  usu- 
ally abound  in  State  histories,  should  in  this  in- 
stance be  made  subordinate  to  the  study  of  her 
democracy  and  its  influences.  So  far  as  the  usual 
details  can  be  given,  and  as  they  illustrate  the 
controlling  features  of  the  volume,  they  have  been 
used  J  but  the  volume  is  not  bound  to  them. 


X  PREFACE. 

Connecticut  migration  has  been  so  great  that  it 
has  been  necessary  to  resist  an  almost  constant 
temptation  to  diverge  to  the  influence  of  Connecti- 
cut men  and  ideas  in  Vermont,  New  York,  New- 
Jersey,  Ohio,  Michigan,  and  other  commonwealths. 
How  large  that  influence  has  been  is  not  widely 
known.  Hollister  states  that  in  1857  a  single 
county  (Litchfield)  had  been  the  birthplace  of  thir- 
teen United  States  senators,  twenty-two  represen- 
tatives from  New  York,  fifteen  supreme  court 
judges  in  other  States,  nine  presidents  of  colleges 
and  eighteen  other  professors,  and  eleven  gover- 
nors and  lieutenant-governors  of  States.  The  re- 
mark is  attributed  to  Calhoun  that  he  had  seen 
the  time  when  the  members  of  congress  born  or 
educated  in  Connecticut  lacked  but  five  of  being 
a  majority.  This  must  be  taken  with  allowance, 
even  if  it  were  exact ;  for  by  no  means  all  those 
educated  in  Connecticut  have  done  much  to  carry 
Connecticut  characteristics  elsewhere.  But,  with 
all  allowance,  the  foreign  influence  of  Connecti- 
cut has  been  extraordinary.  One  must  sympa- 
thize with  the  astonishment  of  the  Frenchman 
who,  hearing  that  this  and  that  distinguished  man, 
though  a  resident  of  another  State,  was  bom  in 
Connecticut,  went  to  the  library  to  find  the  loca- 
tion of  the  State,  and  found  that  it  was  "  nothing 
but  a  little  yellow  spot  on  the  map."  If  there  be 
anything  in  the  claims  for  the  work  of  the  Connec- 
ticut commonwealth,  they  must  be  still  further 


PREFACE.  xi 

strengthened  by  the  influence  which  the  children 
of  the  commonwealth  have  carried  into  all  sorts 
of  channels. 

The  original  scheme  of  the  Series  did  not  in- 
clude the  feature  of  foot-notes  for  authorities,  and 
the  writer  followed  the  plan  of  putting  his  author- 
ities into  a  bibliography.  It  has  not  seemed  ne- 
cessary to  alter  the  arrangement,  and  it  has  been 
retained  as  an  essay  toward  a  bibliography  of  the 
commonwealth  for  the  further  use  of  students.^  It 
is  not  meant  to  be  implied  that  all,  or  nearly  all, 
the  books  there  named  have  been  used  exhaus- 
tively ;  very  many  of  them  have  merely  been  re- 
ferred to  in  order  to  keep  the  writer  from  going 
astray  in  matters  on  which  their  authors  are  au- 
thority and  he  is  not.  If  he  has,  nevertheless, 
erred  in  these  respects,  he  will  feel  under  great 
obligations  to  those  who  will  call  his  attention  to 
the  errors.  The  whole  list  is  inserted  in  the  hope 
that  it  may  be  of  some  preliminary  service  to 
those  who  shall  further  and  more  effectively  pros- 
ecute the  study  of  this  commonwealth's  great  and 
honest  work. 

The  approaching  year  1889  is  the  250th  anni- 
versary (or,  to  adopt  the  modern  phrase,  the  quar- 
ter-millennial) of  the  Constitution  of  1639,  which 
seems  to  the  writer  the  most  far-reaching  political 
work  of  modern  times,  and  from  which  he  con- 
ceives there  are  direct  lines  of  communication  run- 
ning down  to  all  the  great  events  which  followed, 

^  So'e  Appendix,  p.  397. 


xii  PREFACE. 

—  to  commonwealth  organization  and  colonial 
resistance,  to  national  independence  and  federa- 
tion, to  national  union  and  organization,  and  even 
to  national  self-preservation  and  reconstruction. 
During  the  same  year  the  nation  will  celebrate 
the  one  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  inaugurar- 
tion  of  its  Constitution,  to  whose  essence  and  ex- 
pression Connecticut  contributed  so  largely.  This 
volume  has  been  written  in  the  hope  that  it  may 
aid  in  widening  the  appreciation  of  Connecticut's 
first  constitution,  so  that  its  birthday  shall  no* 
pass  without  its  fair  share  of  remembrance. 

Princeton,  N.  J.,  Man  1»  ^^887. 


CONTENTS. 

— •— 

CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 

The  Physical  Geography  of  Connecticut 1 

CHAPTER  II. 
Jurisdiction  of  the  Connecticut  Territory    ....      7 

CHAPTER  III. 
^,y    The  First  Settlements  of  Connecticut 14 

CHAPTER  IV. 
^HE  Indians  of  Connecticut 26 

j^^  CHAPTER  V. 

The  Pequot  War 34 

/  CHAPTER  VI. 

The  Connecticut  Colony 56/ 

CHAPTER  VII. 
The  New  Haven  Colony 83 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
The  Saybrook  Attempt  and  its  Failure 108 

CHAPTER  IX. 
Connecticut  until  the  Union 120 

CHAPTER  X. 
The  Two  Colonies  until  the  Union 143 

CHAPTER  XI. 
The  Charter  and  the  Union 163 


XIV  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XII. 
The  Commonwealth.     1662-1763 .192 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
Ecclesiastical  Affaibs.     1636-1791 220 

CHAPTER  XrV. 
FmANCUL  Affaers.     1640-1763 248 

CHAPTER  XV. 
Commonwealth    Development.  —  Wyoming    and     the 
Western  Reserve 265 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
The  Stamp  Act  and  the  Revolution 285 

CHAPTER  XVII. 
The  Adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution  ....  315 

CHAPTER  XVni. 
Industrial  Development 328 

CHAPTER  XIX. 
Connecticut  in  the  War  for  the  Union 374 

CHAPTER  XX. 
Recent  Development 385 

APPENDIX.    The  Constitution  of  1639 407 

Bibliography 415 

The  Governors  of  Connecticut 419 

Index 421 


Note.  —  The  seal  on  tlie  title-page  is  a  fac-simile  of  that  which 
appears  on  the  title-page  of  the  first  revision  of  the  laws  of  Con- 
necticut, made  in  1672  and  published  at  Cambridge,  Massachu- 
setts, by  S.  Green  in  1673.  A  discussion  of  the  seals  of  Connec- 
ticut will  be  found  in  the  Collections  of  the  Connecticut  Historical 
Society,  I.  251. 


Theirs  is  a  pure  republic,  wild,  yet  strong, 
A  '•  fierce  democracie,"  where  all  are  true 

To  what  themselves  have  voted  —  right  or  wrong  — 
And  to  their  laws  denominated  "  blue  ;  " 

If  red,  they  might  to  Draco's  code  belong. 
A  vestal  State,  which  power  could  not  subdue, 

Nor  promise  win,  —  like  her  own  eagle's  nest, 

Sacred,  — the  San  Marino  of  the  West. 

A  justice  of  the  peace,  for  the  time  being. 

They  bow  to,  but  may  turn  him  out  next  year; 

They  reverence  their  priest,  but,  disagreeing 
In  price  or  creed,  dismiss  him  without  fear  : 

They  have  a  natural  talent  for  foreseeing 

And  knowing  all  things ;  and,  should  Park  appear 

From  his  long  tour  in  Africa,  to  show 

The  Niger's  source,  they  'd  meet  him  with  —  We  know. 

They  love  their  land  because  it  is  their  own, 
And  scorn  to  give  aught  other  reason  why ; 

Would  shake  hands  with  a  king  upon  his  throne. 
And  think  it  kindness  to  his  majesty; 

A  stubborn  race,  fearing  and  flattering  none. 
Such  are  they  nurtured,  such  they  live  and  die. 


Fitz-Gbkeke  Halleck. 


CONNECTICUT. 


CHAPTER  I. 
THE   PHYSICAL  GEOGRAPHY  OF   COIWECTICUT. 

The  story  of  the  commonwealth  of  Connecticut 
is  one  which  is  not  strongly  marked  by  the  ro- 
mantic element.  Here  are  no  witchcraft  delu- 
sions or  persecuted  Quakers,  no  doughty  paladins 
or  high-souled  Indian  maidens,  no  drowsy  burghers 
or  wooden-legged  governors,  —  only  laborious  and 
single  -  minded  men  building  a  new  state  on  a 
new  soil,  exemplifying  in  the  process  the  ten- 
dency of  their  race,  when  placed  in  a  wilderness, 
to  revert  to  the  ancestral  type  of  civil  government, 
ignoring  the  excrescences  which  centuries  have 
bred  upon  it.  The  record  of  their  work  need  not 
lose  value  from  its  simplicity. 

Connecticut  is  the  furthest  southwest  of  the 
little  group  of  six  American  commonwealths  to 
which  the  popular  name  of  New  England  has 
been  attached.  It  is  of  oblong  shape,  its  northern 
and  southern  boundaries  being  about  eighty-eight 
and  one  hundred  miles  long  respectively,  and  its 
1 


2  CONNECTICUT. 

eastern  and  western  boundaries  forty-five  and 
seventy-two  miles.  The  northern  and  eastern 
boundaries  are  nearly  straight  lines  east  and  west, 
and  north  and  south,  respectively.  The  western 
boundary  is  irregular  at  the  southern  extremity. 
The  irregularities  will  be  considered  more  fully 
hereafter,  as  they  are  the  embodied  mementos  of 
certain  steps  by  which  the  material  form  of  the 
commonwealth  was  built  up.  The  irregular  south- 
ern coast  is  washed  by  the  waters  of  Long  Island 
Sound,  beyond  which  lies  the  island  which  nature, 
confirmed  by  law,  assigned  to  Connecticut,  though 
the  greed  of  the  house  of  Stuart,  superior  to  both 
law  and  nature,  transferred  it  permanently  to  New 
York.  The  area  of  Connecticut  is  4,990  square 
miles,  about  one  third  that  of  Denmark  and  not 
quite  one  half  that  of  the  Netherlands. 

The  trend  of  the  rivers  will  indicate  the  general 
nature  of  the  surface  of  the  commonwealth,  which 
is  a  succession  of  north  and  south  hill  ranges, 
separated  by  river  valleys.  The  great  central 
valley,  about  twenty  miles  in  width,  is  drained  by 
the  river  Connecticut  as  far  south  as  Middletown, 
where  the  stream,  forcing  an  outlet  between  two 
encroaching  cliffs,  pursues  its  way  to  the  Sound  at 
Saybrook,  while  the  valley  extends  southwest  to 
New  Haven.  This  central  valley,  the  seat  of  the 
early  colonization,  has  an  ideal  agricultural  soil,  a 
deep,  rich  loam,  as  far  south  as  the  point  where 
the  river  leaves  it;   thence  to  New  Haven  it  is 


PHYSICAL    GEOGRAPHY  OF   CONNECTICUT.  3 

more  sandy  and  less  profitable.  The  smaller  and 
more  broken  valleys  of  the  eastern  part  of  the 
commonwealth,  the  former  "  Pequot  Country," 
where  the  hill  summits  are  not  of  great  elevation, 
attracted  the  early  settlers  through  their  advan- 
tages for  grazing :  their  water  power  has  since 
proved  a  greater  source  of  wealth  from  manufac- 
tures. The  western  part  of  Connecticut  is  even 
more  broken  than  the  eastern,  and  the  sharp  and 
ragged  character  of  the  hill-range  summits  make 
them  a  somewhat  greater  obstacle  to  east  and  west 
travel.  Rough  as  is  the  general  surface  of  the 
State,  its  highest  point,  Bear  Mountain  in  Salis- 
bury, is  2,354  feet  above  sea-leveL 

Agriculture,  in  its  various  forms,  was  the  first 
inducement  to  settlement ;  but  the  settlers  soon 
found  that  the  soil  contained  metals.  Of  these, 
iron  alone  was  profitable  ;  the  manufacture  of 
nails  of  all  sizes  was  for  a  long  time  the  principal 
home  industry  for  the  colonists  in  their  leisure  hours. 
Much  of  the  iron  used  for  the  weapons  of  the  Rev- 
olution came  from  Connecticut ;  and  its  hematite 
ore  still  furnishes  the  best  iron  of  its  class  in  the 
country.  Copper  and  lead  exist  in  sufficient  amount 
to  lure  a  never-ending  stream  of  adventurers  into 
financial  difficulties.  The  copper  mines  of  Sims- 
bury  (now  in  East  Granby)  were  discovered 
about  1705,  ruined  a  number  of  successive  pro- 
prietors, and  were  finally  made  the  state  prison. 
They  furnished  the  material  for  the   "  Granby 


4  CONNECTICUT, 

coppers,"  coined  in  1737,  and  for  other  coins,  in- 
cluding the  first  United  States  coinage.  There  is 
even  an  ignis  fatuus  of  gold  and  silver.  The  rocks 
of  Connecticut  have  proved  richer  than  a  gold  mine 
to  those  who  have  developed  them.  Lime-stone, 
marble,  brown-stone,  and  flagging-stone  are  found 
in  excellent  quality  and  unlimited  amount,  and  a 
large  portion  of  the  State  leaves  its  borders  annu- 
ally in  this  form  of  export.  The  supply  of  feldspar 
and  other  minerals  has  been  developed  as  sharper 
demand  for  them  has  arisen. 

The  beautiful  southern  shore  of  Connecticut, 
which  holds  countless  pictures  in  every  mile  of  its 
extent,  has  many  harbors,  and  one,  that  of  New 
London,  has  advantages  beyond  the  others.  There 
was  not,  however,  in  early  years,  sufficient  agri- 
cultural wealth  or  other  material  support  behind 
these  harbors  to  build  up  any  great  foreign  trade, 
beyond  a  moderate  export  of  mules,  live  stock, 
and  some  food  products  to  the  West  Indies ;  and, 
in  later  years,  the  railroad  has  been  a  channel 
sufficiently  capacious  to  provide  for  the  outflow 
and  inflow  of  the  wealth  in  whose  production  it 
has  been  so  essential  a  factor  in  Connecticut.  The 
time  will  come  when  the  harbors  of  Connecticut 
will  be  a  necessary  vent  for  foreign  trade,  but  it 
has  not  yet  come. 

To  an  intending  English  colonist  in  1630,  con- 
sidering this  oblong  as  an  unbroken  wilderness, 
there  would  have  been  in  it  two  points  of  great 


PHYSICAL   GEOGRAPHY  OF   CONNECTICUT.  5 

material  advantage.  One  was  the  upper  valley  of 
the  Connecticut,  with  its  rich  soil,  its  broad  mead- 
ows, and  its  capacity  for  luxuriant  vegetation  ; 
and  this  garden  spot  was  the  breach  to  which  the 
first  assaulting  party  naturally  directed  its  course. 
The  other  was  the  inviting  haven  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Thames  River,  apparently  designed  by  nature 
for  the  site  of  a  great  commercial  city  ;  and  this 
was  seized  during  the  first  decade.  There  were 
other  minor  advantages  in  other  parts  of  the  ter- 
ritory, such  as  the  trade  with  the  Indians  for  skins, 
or  the  pursuit  of  the  fish  with  which  Connecticut's 
waters  and  shore  have  always  been  stocked ;  but 
these  two  spots,  the  upper  Connecticut  Valley  and 
the  site  of  the  present  city  of  New  London,  were 
those  to  which  material  interests  most  strongly 
turned  the  first  immigration.  Succeeding  com- 
panies, finding  these  spots  occupied,  were  filtered 
through  them  into  the  surrounding  portions  of  the 
territory. 

Material  interests,  however,  were  far  from  being 
the  only  or  controlling  incentives  to  settlement. 
The  New  Haven  company  deliberately  passed  by 
the  Thames  River  and  sacrificed  its  preeminent 
commercial  advantages,  which  must  have  been 
sufficiently  evident  to  the  shrewd  merchant  who 
was  at  the  head  of  the  enterprise  ;  and  it  is  at  least 
not  an  improbable  notion  that  the  sacrifice  was 
grounded  in  the  desire  to  give  religion  a  place  of 
recognized  and  permanent  superiority  to  commerce 


6  CONNECTICUT. 

in  the  new  settlement.  The  first  break  from  Mas- 
sachusetts into  the  Connecticut  Valley  was  gov- 
erned by  religious,  as  it  was  actuated  by  material, 
motives.  To  the  Connecticut  settler,  religion  was 
an  essential  part  of  daily  life  and  politics,  and  logic 
was  an  essential  part  of  religion.  Town  and 
church  were  but  two  sides  of  the  same  thing. 
Differences  of  opinion  there  must  be,  in  church  as 
well  as  in  town  matters  ;  and,  when  the  respective 
straight  lines  had  diverged  sufficiently,  a  rupture 
became  inevitable.  The  minority,  unwilling  to 
resist  the  majority  or  to  continue  in  illogical  union 
with  it,  preferred  to  begin  a  new  plantation,  even 
in  a  less  hospitable  location.  Thus,  every  reli- 
gious dispute  usually  gave  rise  to  a  new  town,  un- 
til the  faintest  lines  of  theological  divergence  were 
satisfied  ;  while  the  original  disputants,  finding 
that  a  distance  of  even  a  few  miles  was  enough  to 
soften  down  differences  which  once  seemed  intol- 
erable, were  able  to  live  together  in  congregational 
unity  and  harmony. 

These  three  —  Hartford,  New  Haven,  and  New 
London,  and  mainly  the  two  former  —  were  thus 
the  openings  through  which  immigration  flowed  in, 
and,  under  natural  pressure,  was  distributed  over 
the  whole  territory,  even  those  less  inviting  por- 
tions of  it  which  would  have  waited  longer  for 
settlement  but  that  the  pressure  from  behind  made 
distribution  easier  than  return. 


CHAPTER  II. 

JURISDICTION   OF  THE  CONNECTICUT  TEEEI- 
TOKY. 

The  claim  of  England  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
territory  included  in  Connecticut  rested  on  the 
discoveries  of  the  Cabots  in  1497,  and  more  espe- 
cially in  1498,  This  claim,  however,  was  allowed 
to  lie  dormant  until  the  organization  of  the  Lon- 
don and  Plymouth  companies  in  1606,  when  the 
territory  now  in  Connecticut  was  included  in  the 
grant  to  the  Plymouth  Company.  No  effort  was 
made  to  reduce  this  territory  to  possession.  The 
Dutch  were  allowed  to  plant  a  colony  at  New  Am- 
sterdam, and  the  only  white  men  who  adventured 
on  Long  Island  Sound  were  occasional  Dutch 
skippers.  The  first  of  these  was  Adrian  Blok, 
who  in  1614  found  the  mouth  of  the  Connecticut 
River,  and  explored  the  river  as  far  north  as  the 
present  site  of  Hartford.  As  the  tides  affect  the 
Connecticut  much  less  than  they  do  the  Hudson, 
the  Dutch  naturally  gave  the  former  the  name  of 
Varsche  (or  Fresh)  River.  Blok  was  merely  a  dis- 
coverer, and  he  sailed  on  to  Narragansett  Bay, 
leaving  but  a  geographical  impress  on  the  terri- 
tory, whose  importance  to  the  Dutch  lay  only  in 
its  trade  in  peltries. 


8  CONNECTICUT. 

In  1620,  and  without  the  original  permission  of 
the  Plymouth  Company,  English  immigration 
fixed  its  first  grip  on  the  New  England  territory. 
The  Plymouth  Company  itself  did  none  of  the 
work  of  colonization.  It  gave  or  sold  patents  for 
colonies,  and,  after  a  reorganization,  gave  up  its 
imbecile  existence  in  1635,  and  returned  its  charter 
to  the  king,  having  first  carefully  divided  up  the 
soil  among  its  own  members.  The  allotments 
which  are  of  interest  in  our  subject  were  those  of 
the  Duke  of  Richmond  and  the  Earl  of  Carlisle, 
between  the  Hudson  and  Connecticut  rivers  ;  and 
those  of  Sir  Ferdinando  Gorges  and  the  Marquis 
of  Hamilton,  between  the  Connecticut  River  and 
Narragansett  Bay.  None  of  these  grants  was  ever 
asserted  or  made  troublesome  to  the  colonists,  with 
the  exception  of  the  Hamilton  grant. 

The  common  story  in  our  histories  is  that  the 
Council  of  Plymouth  in  1630  granted  the  territory 
now  in  Connecticut  to  the  Earl  of  Warwick,  and 
that  he,  in  1631,  transferred  it  to  Viscount  Say 
and  Sele,  Lord  Brooke,  and  others,  who  were  dis- 
posed to  establish  another  Puritan  colonj'^  in  New 
England.  They  were  detained  in  England  by  the 
approach  of  civil  war ;  but  their  agents,  Winthrop 
at  Boston  and  Fenwick  at  the  mouth  of  the  Con- 
necticut River,  maintained  their  claims,  and  gave 
the  settlers  in  the  upper  Connecticut  Valley  either 
a  private  or  a  tacit  permission  to  enter  their  do- 
main.    In  1662,  with  the  consent  of  the  surviving 


JURISDICTION  OF  CONNECTICUT  TERRITORY.        9 

patentees,  the  jurisdiction  was  transferred  to  the 
Connecticut  colony,  which  could  thus  claim  un- 
broken continuity  of  title  from  the  beginning  of 
English  colonization  in  America. 

The  insistence  of  Connecticut  authorities  on 
this  chain  of  evidence  was  undoubtedly  due  in 
great  measure  to  the  desire  to  make  out  a  title 
paramount  to  anything  which  the  rival  New 
Haven  colony  could  offer,  and  to  put  the  New 
Haven  colonists  into  the  legal  position  of  original 
trespassers,  whose  defect  of  title  could  never  be 
cured  after  the  grant  of  the  charter  in  1662.  Even 
after  this  result  had  been  attained,  and  New  Haven 
had  submitted  to  incorporation  with  Connecticut, 
another  motive  to  continue  the  old  claim  was 
found  in  the  claims  of  the  Hamilton  family  and 
the  colony's  desire  to  antedate  them  with  its  own. 
The  story  above  given  made  out  an  admirably 
harmonious  title  from  beginning  to  end ;  and  it 
was  natural  that  it  should  become  the  official  Con- 
necticut account. 

The  foundation  of  the  whole  account,  the  grant 
to  Warwick,  is  altogether  mythical ;  no  one  has 
ever  seen  it,  or  has  heard  of  any  one  who  claims  to 
have  seen  it.  It  is  not  mentioned  even  in  the 
grant  from  Warwick  to  the  Say  and  Sele  patentees 
in  1631.  In  that  document,  "  Robert,  Earl  of 
Warwick,  sendeth  greeting  in  our  Lord  God  ever- 
lasting to  all  people  unto  whom  this  present  writ- 
ing  shall  come."     He  "gives,   grants,  bargains, 


10  CONNECTICUT. 

sells,  enfeoffs,  aliens,  and  confirms"  to  the  Viscount 
Say  and  Sele,  Lord  Brooke,  John  Pym,  John 
Hampden,  and  others,  the  soil  from  the  Narragan- 
sett  River  to  the  Pacific  Ocean,  and  all  jurisdic- 
tion "  which  the  said  Robert,  Earl  of  Warwick, 
now  hath  or  had  or  might  use,  exercise,  or  enjoy." 
What  jurisdiction  he  had,  or  whence  he  had  ac- 
quired it,  he  is  careful  not  to  say  ;  the  deed  is  a 
mere  quitclaim,  which  warrants  nothing,  and  does 
not  even  assert  title  to  the  soil  transferred.  In 
the  Hamilton  grant,  on  the  contrary,  the  claim  of 
title  is  carefully  and  fully  stated.  Why  the  War- 
wick transaction  took  this  peculiar  shape,  why 
Warwick  transferred,  without  showing  title,  a  ter- 
ritory which  the  original  owners  granted  anew  to 
other  patentees  in  1635,  are  questions  which  are 
beyond  conjecture.  It  is  evident,  however,  that 
the  New  Haven  colonists  were  until  1662  on  an 
absolute  equality  with  their  brethren  of  Connecti- 
cut ;  that  all  were  legally  trespassers  ;  and  that 
the  charter  of  1662  could  have  no  retroactive 
effect  in  validating  the  Say  and  Sele  title,  for  that 
was  a  nullity.  The  charter  of  1662  is  the  only 
legal  title  of  Connecticut ;  the  only  legal  titles 
prior  to  it,  the  grants  of  1635,  were  barred  by  pre- 
scription before  the  Hamilton  heirs  undertook  to 
prosecute  their  claim.  In  yielding  to  the  final 
junction,  New  Haven  yielded  to  royal  power,  not 
to  a  better  title  enforced  by  law. 

The  jurisdiction  of  Connecticut  had  a  far  better 


JURISDICTION  OF  CONNECTICUT  TERRITORY.     11 

title  than  could  have  been  conferred  by  any  charter ; 
and  the  titles  of  both  Connecticut  and  New  Haven 
stood  on  exactly  the  same  footing.  In  1630  the 
territory  was  a  wilderness.  The  king  of  England 
had  laid  claim  to  it  by  virtue  of  the  undisputed  fact 
that  Sebastian  Cabot  might  possibly  have  caught 
a  distant  glimpse  of  it  as  be  passed  by  the  coast 
more  than  a  century  before.  The  king  granted  it 
to  a  company  which  had  not  yet  either  settled  or 
granted  it.  Just  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil 
War  in  England,  the  territory  was  reduced  to 
possession  by  immigrants,  who  quieted  the  claims 
of  the  Indians  by  contract,  and  enforced  the  con- 
tract by  public  force.  The  Civil  War  and  its  con- 
sequences upon  royal  authority  lasted  long  enough 
to  cover  the  time  which  human  law  takes  as  a  title 
by  prescription.  When  Charles  II.  returned,  who 
could  show  a  better  title  to  the  soil  of  Connecticut 
than  the  colonists  themselves  ? 

This  could  cover,  at  the  best,  only  the  title  to 
the  soil ;  the  civil  jurisdiction  is  of  more  impor- 
tance. The  first  settlements,  at  Hartford,  Windsor 
and  Wethersfield,  were  an  irruption  of  subjects  of 
the  king  of  England  into  an  unorganized  and  un- 
occupied territory,  very  much  like  the  first  settle- 
ments in  the  territory  of  Iowa,  more  than  two 
centuries  later.  But  there  was  one  very  great 
difference  between  the  two  cases  :  the  Iowa  settle- 
ment was  an  irruption  of  individuals  ;  the  Con- 
necticut settlement  was  an  irruption  of  organized 


12  CONNECTICUT. 

towns.  In  Massachusetts,  the  original  towns,  or 
"  plantations,"  were  hardly  to  be  taken  as  organ- 
ized governments  ;  and  the  advent  of  the  charter 
government  reduced  them,  and  subsequent  towns 
as  well,  to  a  condition  of  subordination.  In  Con- 
necticut, three  fully  organized  Massachusetts 
towns  passed  out  of  the  jurisdiction  of  any  com- 
monwealth, and  proceeded  to  build  up  a  common- 
wealth of  their  own ;  while  in  New  Haven  the 
original  town  and  its  successive  allies  entered 
their  new  locations  without  ever  having  owned 
connection  with  any  commonwealth  since  leaving 
England.  The  commonwealth  jurisdiction  of  Con- 
necticut is  peculiar  in  that  it  was  the  product,  in- 
stead of  the  source,  of  its  town  system. 

As  a  commonwealth,  Connecticut  has  never  lost 
the  characteristics  due  to  its  origin.  Although 
the  commonwealth,  by  the  royal  charter  of  1662, 
obtained  a  legal  basis  independent  of  the  towns 
and  superior  to  them  in  law,  the  towns  have  re- 
tained a  marked  individuality,  and  the  common- 
wealth a  narrowness  of  function,  which  indicate 
the  original  relations  of  both.  When  Connecticut 
undertook  to  push  her  claims  in  Wyoming  and  in 
Ohio,  the  instrument  to  which  she  instinctively 
turned  was  the  town  system,  rather  than  the  com- 
monwealth. And  she  still  is,  in  many  respects,  a 
congeries  of  towns,  though  the  commonwealth 
spirit  has  grown  stronger  with  the  years.  Curious 
and  worthy  of  study  as  is  the  New  England  town 


JURISDICTION  OF  CONNECTICUT  TERRITORY.       13 

system,  there  are  few  phases  of  it  more  worthy  of 
study  than  the  manner  in  which,  in  Connecticut, 
it  succeeded  in  creating  a  commonwealth  body  for 
itself ;  in  pushing  back  the  asserted  boundaries  of 
its  neighbors  ;  and  at  last,  when  the  royal  power 
could  no  longer  be  evaded,  in  using  the  royal 
power  to  round  out  and  complete  its  own  form,  as 
it  could  not  have  done  itself  without  a  fratricidal 
struggle  with  a  sister  colony. 


CHAPTER  III. 

,      THE  FIRST   SETTLEMENTS   OF   CONNECTICUT. 

During  the  ten  years  after  1620,  the  twin  col- 
onies of  Plymouth  and  Massachusetts  Bay  had 
been  fairly  shaken  down  into  their  places,  and  had 
even  begun  to  look  around  them  for  opportunities 
of  extension.  It  was  not  possible  that  the  fertile 
and  inviting  territory  to  the  southwest  should  long 
escape  their  notice.  In  1629,  De  Rasieres,  an  en- 
voy from  New  Amsterdam,  was  at  Plymouth.  He 
found  the  Plymouth  people  building  a  shallop  for 
the  purpose  of  obtaining  a  share  in  the  wampum 
trade  of  Narragansett  Bay  ;  and  he  very  shrewdly 
sold  them  at  a  bargain  enough  wampum  to  supply 
their  needs,  for  fear  they  should  discover  at  Nar- 
ragansett the  more  profitable  peltry  trade  beyond. 
This  artifice  only  put  off  the  evil  day.  Within 
the  next  three  years,  several  Plymouth  men,  in- 
cluding Winslow,  visited  the  Connecticut  River, 
"  not  without  profit."  In  April,  1631,  a  Connecti- 
cut Indian  visited  Governor  Winthrop  at  Boston, 
asking  for  settlers,  and  offering  to  find  them  corn 
and  furnish  eighty  beaver  skins  a  year.  Win- 
throp declined  even  to  send  an  exploring  party.  In 


FIRST  SETTLEMENTS   OF  CONNECTICUT.       15 

the  midsummer  of  1633,  Winslow  went  to  Boston 
to  propose  a  joint  occupation  of  the  new  territory 
by  Plymouth  and  Massachusetts  Bay ;  but  the 
latter  still  refused,  doubting  the  profit  and  the 
safety  of  the  venture. 

Three  months  later,  Plymouth  undertook  the 
work  alone.  A  small  vessel,  under  command  of 
William  Holmes,  was  sent  around  by  sea  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Connecticut  River,  with  the  frame 
of  a  trading  house  and  workmen  to  put  it  up. 
When  Holmes  had  sailed  up  the  river  as  far  as 
the  place  where  Hartford  was  afterward  built,  he 
found  the  Dutch  already  in  possession.  For  ten 
years  they  had  been  talking  of  erecting  a  fort  on 
the  Varsche  River  ;  but  the  ominous  and  repeated , 
appearance  of  New  Englanders  in  the  territory  had 
roused  them  to  action  at  last.  John  Van  Corlear, 
with  a  few  men,  had  been  commissioned  by  Gover- 
nor Van  T wilier,  and  had  put  up  a  rude  earth- 
work, with  two  guns,  within  the  present  jurisdic- 
tion of  Hartford.  His  summons  to  Holmes  to 
stop  under  penalty  of  being  fired  into  met  with  no 
more  respect  than  was  shown  by  the  commandant 
of  Rensselaerswyck  to  his  challengers,  according 
to  the  veracious  Knickerbocker.  Holmes  declared 
that  he  had  been  sent  up  the  river,  and  was  going 
up  the  river,  and  furthermore  he  went  up  the 
river.  His  little  vessel  passed  on  to  the  present 
site  of  Windsor.  Here  the  crew  disembarked,  put 
up  and  garrisoned  their  trading  house,  and  then 


16  CONNECTICUT. 

returned  home.  Plymouth  had  at  least  planted 
the  flag  far  within  the  coveted  and  disputed  terri- 
tory. 

In  December  of  the  following  year,  a  Dutch 
force  of  seventy  men  from  New  Amsterdam  ap- 
peared before  the  trading  house  to  drive  out  the 
intruders.  He  must  be  strong  who  drives  a  Yan- 
kee away  from  a  profitable  trade  ;  and  the  attitude 
of  the  little  garrison  was  so  determined  that  the 
Dutchmen,  after  a  few  hostile  demonstrations,  de- 
cided that  the  nut  was  too  hard  to  crack,  and 
withdrew.  For  about  twenty  years  thereafter, 
the  Dutch  held  post  at  Hartford,  isolated  from 
Dutch  support  by  a  continually  deepening  mass  of 
New  Englanders,  who  refrained  from  hostilities, 
and  waited  until  the  apple  was  ripe  enough  to 
drop. 

With  respect  to  the  claims  of  the  Indians,  the 
attitudes  of  the  two  parties  to  the  struggle  were  di- 
rectly opposite.  The  Dutch  came  on  the  strength 
of  purchase  from  the  Pequots,  the  conquerors  and 
lords  paramount  of  the  local  Indians.  Holmes 
brought  to  the  Connecticut  River  in  his  vessel  the 
local  sachems,  who  had  been  driven  away  by  the 
Pequots,  and  made  his  purchases  from  them.  The 
English  policy  will  account  for  the  unfriendly  dis- 
position of  the  Pequots,  and,  when  followed  up  by 
the  tremendous  overthrow  of  the  Pequots,  for  Con- 
necticut's permanent  exemption  from  Indian  dif- 
ficulties.     The   Connecticut   settlers    followed   a 


FIRST  SETTLEMENTS  OF  CONNECTICUT.        17 

straight  road,  buying  lands  fairly  from  the  Indians 
found  in  possession,  ignoring  those  who  claimed  a 
supremacy  based  on  violence,  and,  in  case  of  re- 
sistance by  the  latter,  asserting  and  maintaining 
for  Connecticut  an  exactly  similar  title,  —  the 
right  of  the  stronger.  Those  who  claimed  right 
received  it ;  those  who  preferred  force  were  ac- 
commodated. 

One  route  to  the  new  territory,  by  Long  Is- 
land Sound  and  the  Connecticut  River,  had  thus 
been  appropriated.  The  other,  the  overland  route 
through  Massachusetts,  was  explored  during  the 
same  year,  1633,  by  one  John  Oldham,  who  was 
murdered  by  the  Pequots  two  years  afterward. 
He  found  his  way  westward  to  the  Connecticut 
River,  and  brought  back  most  appetizing  accounts 
of  the  upper  Connecticut  Valley ;  and  his  reports 
seem  to  have  suggested  a  way  out  of  a  serious  dif- 
ficulty which  had  come  to  a  head  in  Massachu- 
setts Bay. 

The  colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay  was  at  this 
time  limited  to  a  district  covering  not  more  than 
twenty  or  thirty  miles  from  the  sea,  and  its  great- 
est poverty,  as  Cotton  stated,  was  a  poverty  of 
men.  And  yet  the  colony  was  to  lose  part  of  its 
scanty  store  of  men.  Three  of  the  eight  Massa- 
chusetts towns,  Dorchester,  Watertown,  and  New- 
town (now  Cambridge),  had  been  at  odds  with 
the  other  five  towns  on  several  occasions ;  and  the 
assigned  reasons  are  apparently  so  frivolous  as  to 


18  CONNECTICUT. 

lead  to  the  suspicion  that  some  fundamental  differ- 
ence was  at  the  bottom  of  them.  The  three  towns 
named  had  been  part  of  the  great  Puritan  influx 
of  1630.  Their  inhabitants  were  "  new-comers," 
and  this  slight  division  may  have  been  increased 
by  the  arrival  and  settlement,  in  1633,  of  a  num- 
ber of  strong  men  at  these  three  towns,  notably 
Hooker,  Stone,  and  Haynes  at  Newtown.  Dor- 
chester, Watertown,  and  Newtown  showed  many 
symptoms  of  an  increase  of  local  feeling  :  the  two 
former  led  the  way,  in  October,  1633,  in  establish- 
ing town  governments  under  "selectmen;"  and 
all  three  neglected  or  evaded,  more  or  less,  the  fun- 
damental feature  of  Massachusetts  policy,  —  the 
limitation  of  ofl&ce-holding  and  the  elective  fran- 
chise to  church-members.  The  three  towns  fell 
into  the  position  of  the  commonwealth's  opposi- 
tion, a  position  not  particularly  desirable  at  the 
time  and  under  all  the  circumstances. 

The  ecclesiastical  leaders  of  Dorchester  were 
Warham  and  Maverick  ;  of  Newtown,  Hooker  and 
Stone  ;  of  Watertown,  Phillips.  Haynes  of  New- 
town, Ludlow  of  Dorchester,  and  Pynchon  of 
Roxbury,  were  the  principal  lay  leaders  of  the 
half-formed  opposition.  Some  have  thought  that 
Haynes  was  jealous  of  Governor  Winthrop,  Hooker 
of  Cotton,  and  Ludlow  of  everybody.  But  the 
opposition,  if  it  can  be  fairly  called  an  opposition, 
was  not  so  definite  as  to  be  traceable  to  any  such 
personal  source.     The  strength  which  marked  the 


FIRST  SETTLEMENTS  OF  CONNECTICUT.         19 

divergence  was  due  neither  to  ambition  nor  to 
jealousy,  but  to  the  strength  of  mind  and  charac- 
ter which  marked  the  leaders  of  the  minority. 

Thomas  Hooker  and  Samuel  Stone  were  of 
Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge.  Hooker  began 
to  preach  at  Chelmsford  in  1626,  and  was  silenced 
for  non-conformity  in  1629.  He  then  taught 
school,  his  assistant  being  John  Eliot,  afterward 
the  apostle  to  the  Indians  ;  but  the  chase  after 
him  became  warmer,  and  in  1630  he  retired  to 
Holland  and  resumed  his  preaching.  In  1632,  he 
and  Stone  came  to  New  England  as  pastor  and 
teacher  of  the  church  at  Newtown  ;  and  the  two 
took  part  in  the  migration  to  Hartford.  Here 
Hooker  became  the  undisputed  ecclesiastical  leader 
of  Connecticut  until  his  death  in  1647.  John 
Warham  and  John  Maverick,  both  of  Exeter  in 
England,  came  to  New  England  in  1630,  as  pastor 
and  teacher  of  Dorchester.  Maverick  died  while 
preparing  to  follow  his  church,  but  Warham  set- 
tled with  his  parishioners  at  Windsor,  and  died 
there  in  1670.  George  Phillips,  also  a  Cambridge 
man,  came  to  New  England  in  1630,  as  pastor  of 
the  church  at  Watertown.  He  took  no  part  in 
the  migration,  but  lived  and  died  at  Watertown. 
Fate  seems  to  have  determined  that  Wendell  Phil- 
lips should  belong  to  Massachusetts. 

Roger  Ludlow  was  Endicott's  brother-in-law. 
He  came  to  New  England  in  1630,  and  settled  at 
Dorchester.     He  was  deputy  governor  in   1634, 


20  CONNECTICUT. 

and  seems  to  have  been  "  slated,"  to  use  the 
modern  term,  for  the  governorship  in  the  follow- 
ing year.  But  this  private  agreement  among  the 
deputies  was  broken,  for  some  unknown  reason, 
by  the  voters,  who  chose  Haynes,  perhaps  as  a 
less  objectionable  representative  of  the  opposition. 
Ludlow  complained  so  openly  and  angrily  of  the 
failure  to  carr}'  out  the  agreement  that  he  was 
dropped  from  the  magistracy  at  the  next  election. 
He  went  at  once  to  Connecticut,  and  was  deputy 
governor  there  in  alternate  years  until  1654. 
Incensed  at  the  interference  of  New  Haven  to 
prevent  his  county,  Fairfield,  from  waging  an  in- 
dependent warfare  against  the  Dutch,  he  went  to 
Virginia  in  1654,  taking  the  records  of  the  county 
with  him.  It  is  not  known  when  or  where  he 
died.  Pynchon,  the  third  lay  leader  of  the  oppo- 
sition, took  part  in  the  migration,  but  remained 
within  the  jurisdiction  of  Massachusetts,  founding 
the  town  of  Springfield. 

At  the  May  session  of  the  Massachusetts  Gen- 
eral Court  in  1634,  an  application  for  "  liberty  to 
remove  "  was  received  from  Newtown.  It  was 
granted.  At  the  September  session,  the  request 
was  changed  into  one  for  removal  to  Connecticut. 
This  was  a  very  different  matter,  and,  after  long 
debate,  was  defeated  by  the  vote  of  the  Assistants, 
though  the  Deputies  passed  it.  Various  reasons 
were  assigned  for  the  request  to  remove  to  Con- 
necticut, —  lack  of  room  in  their  present  locations, 


FIBST  SETTLEMENTS  OF  CONNECTICUT.         21 

the  desire  to  save  Connecticut  from  the  Dutch, 
and  "  the  strong  bent  of  their  spirits  to  remove 
thither;"  but  the  last  looks  like  the  strongest 
reason.  In  like  manner,  while  the  arguments  to 
the  contrary  were  those  which  would  naturally 
suggest  themselves,  the  weakening  of  Massachu- 
setts, and  the  peril  of  the  emigrants,  the  conclud- 
ing argument,  that  "the  removing  of  a  candle- 
stick "  would  be  "  a  great  judgment,"  seems  to 
show  the  feeling  of  all  parties  that  the  secession 
T7as  the  result  of  discord  between  two  parties. 

Haynes  was  made  governor  at  the  next  General 
Court.  Successful  inducements  were  offered  to 
some  of  the  Newtown  people  to  remove  to  Boston, 
and  some  few  concessions  were  made.  But  the 
migration  which  had  been  denied  to  the  corporate 
towns  had  probably  been  begun  by  individuals. 
There  is  a  tradition  that  some  of  the  Watertown 
people  passed  this  winter  of  1634-5  at  the  place 
where  Wethersfield  now  stands.  In  May,  1635, 
the  Massachusetts  General  Court  voted  that  lib- 
erty be  granted  to  the  people  of  Watertown  and 
Roxbury  to  remove  themselves  to  any  place  within 
the  jurisdiction  of  Massachusetts.  In  March, 
1636,  the  secession  having  already  been  accom- 
plished, the  General  Court  issued  a  "  Commission 
to  Several  Persons  to  govern  the  people  at  Con- 
necticut." Its  preamble  reads  :  "  Whereas,  upon 
some  reasons  and  grounds,  there  are  to  remove 
from  this  our  Commonwealth  and  body  of  the 


22  CONNECTICUT. 

Massachusetts  in  America  divers  of  our  loving 
friends  and  neighbors,  freemen  and  members  of 
Newtown,  Dorchester,  Watertown,  and  other 
places,  who  are  resolved  to  transport  themselves 
and  their  estates  unto  the  river  of  Connecticut, 
there  to  reside  and  inhabit ;  and  to  that  end  divers 
are  there  already,  and  divers  others  shortly  to  go." 
This  tacit  permission  was  the  only  authorization 
given  by  Massachusetts  ;  but  it  should  be  noted 
that  the  unwilling  permission  was  made  more 
gracious  by  a  kindly  loan  of  cannon  and  ammuni- 
tion for  the  protection  of  the  new  settlements. 

If  it  be  true  that  some  of  the  Watertown  peo- 
ple had  wintered  at  Wethersfield  in  1634-5,  this 
was  the  first  civil  settlement  in  Connecticut  ;  and 
it  is  certain  that,  all  through  the  following  spring, 
summer,  and  autumn,  detached  parties  of  Water- 
town  people  were  settling  at  Wethersfield.  Dur- 
ing the  summer  of  1635,  a  Dorchester  party  ap- 
peared near  the  Plymouth  factory,  and  laid  the 
foundations  of  the  town  of  Windsor.  In  October 
of  the  same  year,  a  party  of  sixty  persons,  includ- 
ing women  and  children,  largely  from  Newtown, 
made  the  overland  march  and  settled  where  Hart- 
ford now  stands.  Their  journey  was  begun  so 
late  that  the  winter  overtook  them  before  they 
reached  the  river,  and,  as  they  had  brought  their 
cattle  with  them,  they  found  great  difficulty  in 
getting  everything  across  the  river  by  means  of 
rafts. 


FIRST  SETTLEMENTS  OF  CONNECTICUT.         23 

It  may  have  been  that  the  echoes  of  all  these 
preparations  bad  reached  England,  and  stirred  the 
ta,rdy  patentees  to  action.  Daring  the  antumn  of 
1635,  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  agent  of  the  Say  and 
Sele  associates,  reached  Boston,  with  authority  to 
build  a  large  fort  at  the  mouth  of  the  Connecticut 
River.  He  was  to  be  "  Governor  of  the  River 
Connecticut "  for  one  year,  and  he  at  once  issued 
a  proclamation,  to  the  Massachusetts  emigrants, 
asking  "  under  what  right  and  preference  they 
had  lately  taken  up  their  plantation."  It  is  said 
that  they  agreed  to  give  up  any  lands  demanded 
by  him,  or  to  return  on  having  their  expenses  re- 
paid. A  more  dangerous  influence,  however,  soon 
claimed  Winthrop's  attention.  Before  the  winter 
set  in,  he  had  sent  a  party  to  seize  the  designated 
spot  for  a  fort  at  the  mouth  of  the  Connecticut 
River.  His  promptness  was  needed.  Just  as  his 
men  had  thrown  up  a  work  sufficient  for  defense 
and  had  mounted  a  few  guns,  a  Dutch  ship  from 
New  Amsterdam  appeared,  bringing  a  force  in- 
tended to  appropriate  the  same  place.  Again  the 
Dutch  found  themselves  a  trifle  late  ;  and  their 
post  at  Hartford  was  thus  finally  cut  off  from 
effective  support. 

This  was  a  horrible  winter  to  the  advanced 
guard  of  English  settlers  on  the  upper  Connecti- 
cut. The  navigation  of  the  river  was  completely 
blocked  by  ice  before  the  middle  of  November ; 
and  the  vessels  which  were  to  have  brought  their 


24  CONNECTICUT 

winter  supplies  by  way  of  Long  Island  Sound  and 
the  river  were  forced  to  return  to  Boston,  leaving 
the  wretched  settlers  unprovided  for.  For  a  little 
while,  some  scanty  supplies  of  corn  were  obtained 
from  the  neighboring  Indians,  but  this  resource 
soon  failed.  About  seventy  persons  straggled 
down  the  river  to  the  fort  at  its  mouth.  There 
they  found  and  dug  out  of  the  ice  a  sixty-ton  ves- 
sel, and  made  their  way  back  to  Boston.  Others 
turned  back  on  the  way  they  had  come,  and  strug- 
gled through  the  snow  and  ice  to  "  the  Bay." 
But  a  few  held  their  grip  on  the  new  territory. 
Subsisting  first  on  a  little  corn  bought  from  more 
distant  Indians,  then  by  hunting,  and  finally  on 
ground-nuts  and  acorns  dug  from  under  the  snow, 
they  fought  through  the  winter  and  held  their 
ground.  But  it  was  a  narrow  escape.  Spring 
found  them  almost  exhausted,  their  unsheltered 
cattle  dead,  and  just  time  enough  to  bring  neces- 
sary supplies  from  home.  The  Dorchester  people 
alone  lost  cattle  to  the  value  of  two  thousand 
pounds. 

The  Newtown  congregation,  in  October,  1635, 
found  customers  for  their  old  homes  in  a  new 
party  from  England ;  and  in  the  following  June 
Hooker  and  Stone  led  their  people  overland  to 
Connecticut.  They  numbered  one  hundred,  with 
one  hundred  and  sixty  head  of  cattle.  Women 
and  children  were  of  the  party.  Mrs.  Hooker, 
who  was  ill,  was  carried  on  a  litter ;  and  the  jour- 


FIRST  SETTLEMENTS  OF  CONNECTICUT.         25 

ney,  of  "  about  one  hundred  miles,"  occupied  two 
weeks.  Its  termination  was  well  calculated  to, 
dissipate  the  evil  auguries  of  the  previous  winter. 
The  Connecticut  Valley  in  early  June  !  Its  green 
meadows,  flanked  by  wooded  hills,  lay  before 
them.  Its  oaks,  whose  patriarch  was  to  shelter 
their  charter,  its  great  elms  and  tulip-trees,  were 
broken  by  the  silver  ribbon  of  the  river ;  here 
and  there  were  the  wigwams  of  the  Indians,  or 
the  cabins  of  the  survivors  of  the  winter  ;  and, 
over  and  through  all,  the  light  of  a  day  in  June 
welcomed  the  new-comers.  The  thought  of  aban- 
doning Connecticut  disappeared  forever. 

During  the  summer  of  1636,  the  body  of  the 
church  at  Dorchester  settled  at  Windsor,  having 
Warham  as  its  pastor.  Maverick  had  died  before 
the  removal  was  completed.  The  Watertown 
people  also  completed  their  removal,  having  Henry 
Smith  as  pastor,  Phillips  remaining  behind.  Pyn- 
chon,  with  eight  companions,  settled  at  Springfield, 
just  north  of  the  boundary  between  Massachusetts 
and  Connecticut.  When  the  spring  of  1637  had 
fairly  opened,  there  were  about  eight  hundred 
persons  within  the  present  limits  of  Connecticut, 
two  hundred  and  fifty  of  whom  were  adult  males 
and  fighting  men.  Perhaps  the  "  strong  bent  of 
spirit"  to  remove  to  a  commonwealth  where  indi- 
viduality was  not  to  be  sacrificed  to  "  steady  hab- 
its "  was  not  entirely  confined  to  Newtown,  Wa- 
tertown, and  Dorchester. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  INDIANS   OF  CONNECTICUT. 

The  aborigines  of  Connecticut  did  not  differ 
from  other  New  England  Indians  so  much  as  to 
demand  any  extended  notice.  They  were  not  nu- 
merous ;  the  lowest  and  most  probable  estimate 
of  their  numbers  is  six  or  seven  thousand,  and  the 
highest  twenty  thousand.  The  northeastern  sec- 
tion of  the  territory  was  inhabited  by  the  Nip- 
munks.  The  upper  Connecticut  separated  the 
Tunxis  Indians  on  its  western  banks  from  the 
Podunks  on  the  eastern.  To  the  south  of  both 
were  the  Wangunks.  New  Haven  is  now  in  the 
centre  of  the  former  territory  of  the  Quinnipiacks. 
To  the  west  of  the  Quinnipiacks  were  the  Paugus- 
setts,  and  to  the  west  of  them  a  great  number  of 
scattered  tribes,  known  generally  by  the  names  of 
their  respective  sachems  or  of  the  English  towns 
in  which  they  dwelt. 

All  these  tribes  were  alike  unclean  in  their 
habits,  shiftless  in  their  mode  of  life,  and  much 
addicted  to  powowing,  devil-worship,  and  darker 
immoralities,  if  we  may  trust  the  possibly  hasty 
and  prejudiced  accounts  of  the  early  Puritan  ob- 


THE  INDIANS   OF  CONNECTICUT.  27 

servers.  The  Indian  rule,  that  all  work  is  to  be 
done  by  the  women,  was  enforced  in  its  full  rigor  ; 
but  the  correlative  virtue  of  prowess  in  war  was 
not  so  prominent  in  the  men,  who  were  rather 
prone  to  shout  at  a  distance  than  to  expose  their 
lives  to  the  hazards  of  battle.  They  had,  how- 
ever, developed  military  science  so  far  as  to  have 
become  acquainted  with  the  rudiments  of  fortifi- 
cation. It  is  not  easy  to  say  how  far  their  con- 
structions deserved  the  name  of  forts,  but  they 
were  numerous,  and  were  an  advance  on  the  ordi- 
nary Indian  methods  of  fighting.  The  Connec- 
ticut Indians  were  indebted  for  the  advance,  not 
to  natural  genius,  but  to  their  chronic  terror  of 
their  lords  or  enemies,  the  Mohawks. 

The  Five  Nations  of  Iroquois  in  central  New 
York  had  become  the  leading  Indian   power  ' 
eastern  North  America.      Its  original  five  mc 
bers,    the  Mohawks,  Oneidas,  Onondagas,  Ca 
gas,  and  Senecas,  were  increased  by  the  addil 
of  the  Tuscaroras  from  North  Carolina  in  17 
and  the  confederacy  was  thereafter  known  as  tx 
Six  Nations  ;  but,  at  all  periods  of  its  history,  th> 
Mohawks  were  so  emphatically  the  leading  mem- 
ber that  their  name  was  regularly  put  by  synec- 
doche for  the  whole.     The  Connecticut  Indians, 
at  any  rate,  never  stopped   to   discriminate  mi- 
nutely between  the  various  branches  of  the  Six 
Nations,  but,  on  the  appearance  of  any  of  them, 
promptly  fled  with  the  panic-stricken  cry,  "  The 


28  CONNECTICUT. 

Mohawks  are  coming ! "  There  seems  to  have 
been  hardly  the  thought  of  resistance,  when,  every 
year,  two  elders  of  the  Mohawks  appeared  in 
Connecticut,  passing  from  village  to  village,  col- 
lecting tribute,  and  announcing  the  edicts  of  the 
great  council  at  Onondaga.  To  this  exercise  of 
supremacy  they  seem  to  have  made  but  one  excep- 
tion, the  kindred  tribe  of  the  Pequots. 

The  Indians  of  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island,  and 
probably  Massachusetts,  were   originally   of  one 
blood,  perhaps  divided  into  a  few  strong  tribes.   A 
few  years  before  the  arrival  of  the   English,  ac- 
cording to  tradition,  a  sept  of  the  Mohegan  blood 
from  New  York,  crossing  the  Hudson  and  moving 
eastward  to  the  Connecticut  River,  passed  south- 
ward and  conquered  a  permanent  home  for  them- 
>lves  on  the  shore  of  Long  Island  Sound,  in  the 
theastern  part  of  the  present  State.     This  ir- 
tion  split  the  Indian  population  into  two  parts, 
the  east  of  the  Pequots  were  the  Narragansetts, 
powerful  tribe  of  Miantonomoh  and  Canonchet, 
kvelling  in  Rhode  Island,  but  claiming  still  some 
jortion   of  the  soil  of  Connecticut.     They  were 
dufficiently  intact  to  make  head  against  the  Pe- 
quots, and  waged  continual  war  with  them ;  but, 
lacking  the  ferocity  and  fervor  for  war  which  was 
a   Pequot   characteristic,  they   had   difficulty   in 
maintaining  their  position.     To  the  west  of  the 
Pequots,  the  pressure  of  the  strangers  on  one  side 
and  the  Mohawks  on  the  other  ground  up  the 


THE  INDIANS  OF  CONNECTICUT.  29 

Indians  into  that  mass  of  petty  tribes  which  has 
been  referred  to,  none  of  which  dared  to  offer  re- 
sistance after  the  power  of  the  Pequots  had  been 
once  established,  all  being  interested  merely  to  es- 
cape the  notice  of  their  oppressors  as  far  as  pos- 
sible. Thus  the  Pequots,  with  but  seven  hundred 
fighting  men,  were  able  to  overawe  all  the  western 
tribes,  while  maintaining  equal  warfare  with  the 
Narragansetts,  whose  warriors  are  variously  esti- 
mated at  from  one  to  five  thousand.  There  are 
no  annals  of  Indian  diplomacy  from  which  we  may 
learn  how  the  Six  Nations  and  the  Pequots  avoided 
collision  in  the  matter  of  supremacy  over  their 
tributaries;  but  it  is  not  probable  that  either 
power  was  intent  on  establishing  a  right  of  ex- 
clusive extortion.  Both  were  satisfied  by  the  pay- 
ment of  their  respective  tribute,  and  the  Pequot 
irruption  merely  doubled  the  burden  of  the  abori- 
ginal inhabitants. 

At  the  time  of  the  English  entrance  to  Connec- 
ticut, the  grand  sachem  of  the  Pequots  was  Tato- 
bam,  or  Sassacus.  One  of  his  sagamores  was 
Uncas,  whose  grandmother  was  the  sister  of  the 
grandfather  of  Sassacus.  Uncas  had  connected 
himself  still  more  closely  with  the  sachem's  house 
by  taking  the  daughter  of  Sassacus  in  marriage. 
He  was  Sagamore  of  Mohegan,  the  most  impor- 
tant Pequot  district.  His  courage,  strength,  and 
cunning  were  remarkable  even  among  the  Pe- 
quots ;  and  the  relations  between  him  and  Sas- 


30  CONNECTICUT. 

sacus  soon  became  strained  and  finally  broke.  Un- 
able to  resist  the  grand  sachem,  Uncas  fled  to 
the  Narragansetts,  was  allowed  to  return,  rebelled 
again,  and  was  again  defeated  and  fled.  It  was 
inevitable  that  the  coming  of  the  English  should 
act  as  a  wedge  on  this  rift  in  the  conquering  tribe, 
and  should  make  its  downfall  the  surer. 

The  Dutch  had  at  first  recognized  the  Pequots 
as  lords  paramount  of  the  territory,  and  had  made 
their  purchases  of  land  from  them.  But  the  Pe- 
quots, unable  to  restrain  the  savagery  of  their 
natures,  had  lain  in  wait  for  and  killed  some  of 
their  enemies  at  the  Dutch  trading-house,  and  had 
thus  interfered  very  seriously  with  the  course  of 
trade.  In  retaliation,  the  Dutch  had  killed  the 
father  of  Sassacus.  Anxious  to  get  rid  of  his 
troublesome  neighbors,  Sassacus  had  acquiesced 
in  the  invitation  of  Winthrop  to  furnish  settlers 
for  the  Connecticut  Valley.  But  when  Holmes  at 
last  came,  he  brought  back  some  of  the  old  sar 
chems,  who  had  been  expelled  by  the  Pequots,  and 
made  his  purchases  of  land  from  them.  Further- 
more, a  certain  lewd  and  drunken  ship-captain 
named  Stone,  from  Virginia,  having  brought  his 
vessel  into  the  Connecticut  River  during  the  sum- 
mer of  1633,  was  taken  for  a  Dutchman  by  the 
Pequots,  who  murdered  him  while  he  lay  in  a 
drunken  sleep  in  his  cabin.  During  the  following 
year,  Sassacus  sent  messengers  who  made  a  treaty 
with  the  government  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  by  the 


THE  INDIANS  OF    CON'NECTICUT.  31 

terms  of  which  many  of  the  difficulties  between 
his  tribe  and  the  English  were  put  out  of  sight. 
The  Pequots  were  to  allow  the  English  to  colonize 
and  trade  within  their  borders  ;  were  to  give  up 
the  murderers  of  Stone ;  and  were  to  pay  a  tribute 
of  wampum,  a  part  of  which  was  to  be  transferred 
by  the  English  to  the  Narragansetts,  so  as  to  bring 
about  a  peace  between  these  two  ancient  enemies 
without  subjecting  the  haughty  Pequot  chief  to 
the  degradation  of  a  personal  appeal  for  cessation 
of  hostilities.  The  terms  were  largely  nominal. 
The  English  made  no  demand  for  those  who  had 
murdered  Stone,  and  Sassacus  paid  none  of  the 
stipulated  tribute  and  was  asked  for  none. 

The  murder  of  John  Oldham,  in  1636,  first 
brought  the  English  into  collision  with  the  Pe- 
quots. Oldham,  with  a  crew  of  two  boys  and  two 
Narragansett  Indians,  had  been  trading  with  a 
pinnace  on  the  shore  of  the  Pequot  country,  and 
had  passed  on  to  Block  Island.  Here  he  was 
killed  by  the  Island  Indians.  The  murder  had 
hardly  taken  place  when  John  Gallop,  who  was 
sailing  from  the  Connecticut  River  to  the  east  end 
of  Long  Island,  found  Oldham's  vessel  in  posses- 
sion of  Indians.  He  first  fired  duck-shot  into  the 
naked  Indian  crew  until  he  had  driven  them  under 
hatches,  and  then  rammed  Oldham's  vessel  until 
all  but  four  of  the  Indians  had  jumped  overboard 
and  were  drowned.  Two  surrendered,  and  he 
made  sure  of  one  of  them  by  throwing  him  over- 


32  CONNECTICUT. 

board.  As  the  sea  was  rising  he  took  Oldham's 
body  into  his  vessel,  and  allowed  the  derelict  to 
drift  ashore  with  two  of  the  Indians  still  in  her 
hold. 

It  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  Pequots  were  con- 
cerned in  all  this.  But  Governor  Vane  and  his 
council,  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  in  sending  Endi- 
cott  with  an  expedition  to  punish  the  Block  Island- 
ers, assumed  that  the  Pequots  had  harbored  some 
of  the  murderers,  and  must  be  included  in  the 
punishment.  No  proof  was  offered  to  the  in- 
dictment against  the  Pequots,  who  seem  to  have 
held  the  same  place  in  the  English  mind  that 
Habakkuk  held  in  the  Frenchman's,  and  to  be 
"capable  of  anything."  But  Endicott  gathered 
no  laurels  in  his  Pequot  expedition.  His  fero- 
cious antagonists  did  not  wish  to  fight,  and  could 
hardly  be  persuaded  to  fight.  A  few  of  them,  and 
none  of  the  English,  were  killed  and  wounded  ; 
and  the  expedition,  having  satiated  its  wrath  by 
burning  the  Indian  wigwams  and  crops,  returned 
to  Boston. 

Enough  had  been  done  to  range  the  Pequots 
against  the  English.  As  a  choice  of  evils,  Sassa- 
cus  proposed  to  the  Narragansetts  a  treaty  of  alli- 
ance against  the  foreigners,  but  this  was  thwarted 
by  the  influence  of  Roger  Williams,  who  induced 
the  Narragansetts  to  send  ambassadors  to  Boston 
and  conclude  a  treaty  with  the  English.  The  Pe- 
quots were  thus  left  to  maintain  alone  their  ancient 


THE  INDIANS   OF   CONNECTICUT.  33 

title,  by  courage,  to  their  territory.  They  did  not 
hesitate.  The  fort  at  Say  brook,  whose  commander. 
Lieutenant  Gardiner,  had  strongly  disapproved 
Endicott's  expedition,  was  first  attacked.  A  forag- 
ing party  was  cut  off,  and  several  men  were  cap- 
tured and  put  to  the  torture.  Other  parties  were 
similarly  caught  in  ambuscades,  and  the  fort  was 
beleaguered  through  the  whole  winter.  In  the 
spring  of  1637,  the  war  was  opened  in  the  upper 
Connecticut  Valley.  The  people  of  Wethersfield 
had  agreed,  in  buying  lands  from  Sequin,  a  friendly 
Indian,  to  allow  him  to  remain  within  the  town 
limits.  The  agreement  was  violated,  and  he  was 
expelled.  In  revenge,  he  brought  the  Pequots 
down  upon  the  little  settlement.  They  almost 
took  it  by  surprise,  killed  a  number  of  the  people, 
and  inflicted  considerable  damage  before  they  were 
driven  off.  Four  days  afterward,  the  successful 
Pequots  sailed  past  the  fort  at  Saybrook,  waving 
the  clothes  of  their  victims  and  exhibiting  two  cap- 
tive girls.  The  Pequot  war  had  fairly  begun,  and, 
in  the  nature  of  things,  it  could  be  ended  only  by 
the  extermination  of  one  party  or  the  other.  For 
this  severe  strain  upon  an  infant  colony,  the  Con- 
necticut colonists  were  indebted  to  the  stupidity  or 
willfulness  of  Governor  Vane  and  his  council.  They 
must  have  appreciated  Cromwell's  subsequent  es- 
timate of  the  governor. 
3 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  PEQTJOT  WAR. 

The  Connecticut  General  Court  met  at  Hart- 
ford May  1,  1637,  the  ninth  meeting  of  that  body 
which  is  on  the  records.  It  is  not  likely  that  it 
represented,  as  yet,  more  than  eight  hundred  souls, 
though  the  proportion  of  fighting  men  in  so  young 
a  colony  must  have  been  abnormally  large.  Its 
action  was  thorough-going.  It  resolved  that  there 
should  be  "  an  offensiue  warr  against  the  Pequoitt," 
and  a  draft  of  ninety  men  was  ordered  from  the 
three  towns,  —  forty-two  from  Hartford,  thirty 
from  Windsor,  and  eighteen  from  Wethersfield,  — 
the  whole  to  be  under  command  of  Captain  John 
Mason,  of  Windsor.  The  minute  distribution  of 
the  assessment  of  the  requisition  for  stores  upon 
the  three  towns,  and  the  proviso  that  one  half  of 
the  corn  is  to  be  baked  into  biscuit  "  if  by  any 
meanes  they  cann,"  are  evidences  of  the  poverty  of 
the  colony,  and  the  resolution  with  which  its  rulers 
drove  their  demands  upon  its  patriotism  up  to  the 
highest  possible  point.  It  is  certain  that  the 
people  were  nearly  starving  when  they  were  thus 
called  on  for  a  full  third  of  their  able-bodied  men. 


THE  PEQUOT  WAR.  35 

Nine  days  after  the  call,  May  10,  the  ninety  men 
were  ready,  and,  with  seventy  Mohegans  under 
Uncas,  who  was  thereafter  the  ally  of  the  colonists, 
embarked  on  the  river  in  three  small  vessels.  Un- 
cas and  his  men  soon  found  the  voyage  uncomfort- 
able, and  begged  to  be  allowed  to  make  the  trip 
to  Saybrook  by  land.  When  Mason  reached  Say- 
brook,  after  j&ve  days  of  tedious  sailing,  he  found 
Uncas  there,  exultant  in  the  success  of  a  battle 
with  the  Pequots,  in  which  he  had  killed  seven  of 
his  enemies  and  captured  another,  who  had  been 
living  among  the  colonists  as  a  spy.  The  spy 
could  appeal  to  no  law,  civilized  or  savage,  for 
safety ;  but  it  is  a  repulsive  business  to  read  the 
punishment  which  was  allowed  to  be  inflicted.  He 
was  handed  over  to  the  mercy  of  Uncas  and  his 
Mohegans,  who  tortured  and  roasted  him,  and 
finally  ate  him. 

Lying  wind-bound  in  front  of  the  fort  at  Say- 
brook,  Mason  knew  well  that  his  motions  were 
under  the  sharp  ej'^es  of  Pequot  scouts,  and  that 
his  entry  into  the  Thames  River  would  find  his 
enemies  thoroughly  prepared  to  meet  him.  Foi'ti- 
fied  by  a  council  of  war,  and  by  an  all-night  prayer 
of  the  chaplain,  Mr.  Stone,  he  decided  to  disobey 
instructions,  pass  on  to  Narragansett  Bay,  and  at- 
tack the  Pequots  from  the  eastward.  The  change 
of  programme  was  no  doubt  watched  carefully  by 
the  runners  of  Sassacus  ;  and  when  the  three 
vessels  had  passed  the  only  available  landing  place 


36  CONNECTICUT. 

in  the  Pequot  country,  the  Thames  or  Pequot  River, 
the  doomed  tribe  abandoned  itself  to  a  sense  of 
triumphant  security  :  the  white  men  had  not 
dared  attack  them  after  all,  but  had  chosen  the 
less  formidable  Indians  of  Block  Island  or  the  Bay 
as  the  objects  of  their  revenge.  The  danger  had 
passed  them  by. 

On  Saturday,  May  30,  the  little  squadron  came 
to  anchor  in  Narragansett  Bay,  too  late  in  the 
afternoon  to  effect  anything  that  day.  It  is  a 
witness  of  their  conscientious  exposition  of  the 
Puritan  theory  that  the  urgent  need  for  prompt 
action  in  order  to  gain  the  advantage  of  a  sur- 
prise could  not  induce  them  to  devote  Sunday  to 
that  purpose ;  and  then  an  unfavorable  wind  kept 
them  from  landing  until  Tuesday  night.  March- 
ing at  once  to  the  village  of  Miantonomoh,  the 
Narragansett  chief.  Mason  demanded  his  assistance 
against  their  common  enemy.  The  chief  consid- 
ered their  enterprise  a  most  laudable  one,  but 
thought  the  English  too  few  to  deal  with  such 
"  great  captains  "  as  the  Pequots.  All  that  could 
be  obtained  was  permission  to  pass  through  the 
Narragansett  country,  but  a  number  of  individual 
volunteers  from  the  surrounding  Indians  joined 
the  troops  on  their  march.  A  few  days'  waiting 
would  have  increased  their  force  bj  a  Massachu- 
setts reinforcement  under  Captain  Patrick,  which 
had  already  reached  Providence  ;  but  Mason  bal- 
anced the  advantage  of  surprise  against  this  in- 


THE  PEQUOT  WAR.  37 

crease  of  force  and  pushed  on.  Thirteen  men 
were  sent  back  with  the  vessels  to  meet  the  main 
body  at  the  Pequot  River ;  and  the  army  now  con- 
sisted of  seventy-seven  Englishmen,  Uncas's  Mohe- 
gans,  and  about  two  hundred  exceedingly  doubtful 
Narragansett  auxiliaries,  who  were  present  rather 
as  spectators  and  critics  than  as  fighting  men. 

One  day's  march  carried  the  expedition  nearly 
across  the  present  State  of  Rhode  Island,  and  on 
the  next  morning  the  eagerness  of  the  Narragan- 
sett auxiliaries  to  act  as  a  rear  guard  proved 
that  the  trail  was  becoming  uncomfortably  warm. 
Toward  evening,  when  just  north  of  the  present 
town  of  Stonington,  Mason  called  a  halt,  and  was 
told  by  the  Narragansetts  that  they  were  now 
close  to  one  of  the  two  great  Pequot  forts ;  the 
other,  the  chief  residence  of  Sassacus,  being  sev- 
eral hours'  journey  further  on.  Camp  was  formed, 
and  the  men  slept  on  their  arms,  their  outposts 
having  been  pushed  near  enough  to  the  fort  to  hear 
the  revelry  of  the  Indian  garrison,  which  lasted 
until  midnight.  Before  daybreak,  June  5,  the 
men  were  up  and  on  the  march.  Two  miles  of  an 
Indian  trail  brought  them  to  the  foot  of  a  swelling 
hill,  still  known  as  Pequot  Hill,  near  Groton. 
Here  Uncas  was  called  on  for  explanations,  as  there 
were  no  signs  of  the  Pequots.  He  told  Mason 
that  the  fort  was  at  the  top  of  the  hill  before  him, 
and  that  the  Narragansetts  at  the  rear  had  now 
fallen  into  a  condition   of  abject  fright.     '*  Tell 


38  CONNECTICUT. 

them  not  to  fly,"  said  Mason,  "  but  stand  behind, 
at  what  distance  they  please,  and  see  now  whether 
Englishmen  will  fight." 

Underbill  with  part  of  the  men  on  the  southern 
slope,  and  Mason  with  the  rest  on  the  opposite 
side,  stole  cautiously  up  the  hill.  There  were  no 
sentinels,  and  the  garrison  was  still  sound  asleep. 
As  the  assailants  came  within  a  rod  of  the  pali- 
sade, there  was  a  bark  from  an  Indian  cur  within 
it,  and  some  Pequot  warrior,  perhaps  starting  up 
from  a  dream,  called  out  "  Owanux  !  Owanux  !  " 
(Englishmen.)  Still  there  was  no  general  alarm 
within  the  fort  until  the  assaulting  party  fired  a 
volley  through  the  palisade,  which  was  answered 
by  a  terrified  yell  from  the  awakened  garrison. 
The  piles  of  bushes  which  served  for  gates  were 
torn  down,  and  the  English  swarmed  through  into 
the  fort,  but  still  the  Pequots  remained  within 
their  wigwams.  Mason,  after  entering,  stood  in 
the  main  street  and  saw  not  an  Indian  in  it  to  the 
other  side  of  the  fort.  Every  wigwam  which  was 
entered,  however,  became  the  stage  for  a  desperate 
hand-to-hand  struggle.  Some  of  the  Pequots  began 
to  shoot  from  the  wigwam  doors  ;  and  Mason, 
shouting  "  We  must  burn  them,"  touched  a  fire- 
brand to  the  mats  which  covered  a  neighboring 
hut.  The  fire,  fanned  by  a  rising  northeaster, 
spread  through  the  fort ;  Underbill  on  the  other 
side  aided  it  with  gunpowder ;  and  soon  the  at- 
tacking party  was  forced  to  hurry  out  of  the  fur- 


THE  PEQUOT  WAR.  39 

nace  heat.  There  was  no  such  privilege  for  the 
hated  Pequots.  In  an  hour,  from  four  to  six  hun- 
dred of  them  were  roasted  to  death,  seven  being 
taken  prisoners,  and  seven  breaking  through  the 
line  and  escaping.  From  one  hundred  and  fifty  to 
two  hundred  of  the  Indians  were  wari'iors  ;  the 
rest  were  old  men,  women  and  children. 

It  is  true  that  two  of  Mason's  party  were  killed, 
and  about  twenty  wounded,  in  the  whole  struggle, 
but  many  of  the  recorded  casualties  bear  strong 
testimony  to  the  disadvantages  under  which  the 
Indians  fought.  Some  of  the  men  were  saved 
from  arrow  wounds  by  their  neck-cloths  :  when 
so  slight  a  buckler  was  sufficient,  the  force  of  the 
weapon  could  not  have  been  very  terrible.  Sim- 
ilarly, a  piece  of  cheese  in  the  pocket  of  another 
was  enough  to  intercept  an  arrow  in  its  deadly 
flight.  In  recounting  the  subsequent  attack  upon 
the  retreating  party,  Underbill  contemptuously 
says  that  the  Pequots  fought  with  the  Mohegans 
and  Narragansetts  in  such  a  manner  that  neither 
would  have  killed  seven  men  in  seven  years.  The 
arrow  was  shot  into  the  air  at  such  an  elevation 
as  to  drop  on  an  adversary,  if  the  adversary  had 
not  suflficient  forethought  to  step  out  of  the  way  ; 
and  each  arrow  was  retained  until  the  result  of  its 
predecessor  was  ascertained.  The  English  regu- 
larly avoided  the  weapon,  then  picked  it  up  and 
broke  it,  and  thus  gradually  exhausted  the  ammu- 
nition of  the  enemy.     Savages  though  they  were, 


40  CONNECTICUT. 

it  is  pitiful  to  think  of  human  beings,  locked  up 
in  a  furnace  by  a  circle  of  guns  and  keen-tempered 
swords,  and  forced  to  rely  on  such  weapons  as  the 
fallacious  Indian  arrow.  And  yet  to  the  last  the 
Pequots  crawled  up  to  the  palisade  and  shot  their 
impotent  bolts  at  their  inaccessible  foe. 

Mason's  thorough-going  massacre  of  men,  wo- 
men and  children  has  been  compared  to  Arnold's 
butchery  at  New  London,  long  afterward,  to  Ma- 
son's manifest  disadvantage,  since  Arnold  at  least 
did  not  burn  the  village,  drive  the  women  and 
children  back  into  the  flames,  and  roast  them  in 
the  ashes  of  their  homes.  The  comparison  is  un- 
fair. Arnold  had  not  the  slightest  reason  to  ap- 
prehend from  the  women  and  children  of  New 
London  such  treatment  as  Mason  knew  that  the 
Indian  squaws  and  children  would  mete  out  to  his 
men  if  they  were  defeated  and  captured.  In  the 
gray  of  the  opening  morning,  while  Indian  men 
and  women,  hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  one 
another  by  their  dress  and  appearance,  were  vying 
with  one  another  in  the  ferocity  of  their  resist- 
ance, it  was  practically  impossible  for  Mason's 
men  to  make  distinction.  To  say  this  is  not  to 
assert  that  they  were  under  a  controlling  desire 
to  make  such  a  distinction.  On  the  contrary, 
probably  not  a  man  of  them  but  was  there  under 
the  religious  confidence  that  the  Pequots  were 
acting  the  part  of  the  Canaanites  in  resisting  the 
children  of  Israel,  and  that  a  similar  fate  was 


THE  PEQUOT  WAR.  41 

their  proper  portion.  In  this  they  probably  dif- 
fered from  Benedict  Arnold.  Much  as  we  may 
regret  that  Endicott's  unpardonable  raid  had  de- 
cided that  Sassacus  was  to  be  the  enemy  of  the 
colonists,  and  the  disreputable  Uncas  their  friend 
and  ally,  this  decision,  when  reached,  had  no  pos- 
sible result  but  the  complete  overthrow  of  the  Pe- 
quots.  It  is  easy  to  talk  of  sparing  non-combat- 
ants, but  not  easy  to  apply  it  to  a  case  in  which 
the  non-combatants  insist  on  fighting  to  the  death. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  a  truth  that  there  is  no  feature 
in  the  history  of  the  commonwealth  which  is  more 
unpleasant  reading  than  the  conduct  of  the  Pequot 
war  from  its  causeless  outbreak  down  to  its  con- 
clusion. 

Hiring  some  of  his  generous  Narragansett  allies 
to  carry  the  wounded,  Mason  now  began  a  retreat 
to  his  vessels,  which  were  just  sailing  into  what  is 
now  New  London  harbor,  but  half  a  dozen  miles 
away.  By  this  time,  nearly  the  whole  remaining 
power  of  the  Pequot  tribe  had  gathered  at  the 
ruins  of  the  fort.  The  chroniclers  calmly  state 
the  details  of  the  ecstasy  of  rage  into  which  the 
sight  of  their  slaughtered  comrades  threw  them ; 
they  note  with  a  curious  interest,  as  if  speaking  of 
the  almost  human  affection  of  a  she-bear  robbed 
of  her  whelps,  how  the  Pequots  stamped,  shrieked, 
tore  their  hair,  and  finally  rushed  down  the  hill  to 
charge  the  rear  of  the  retiring  column.  But  — 
alas  for  all  excuses  for  the  expedition  !  —  they  also 


42  CONNECTICUT. 

note  that  a  rear  guard  of  a  dozen  men  was  suflB- 
cient  to  repulse  all  the  assaults  of  two  thirds  of 
the  whole  Pequot  power.  The  English  force 
reached  the  vessels  without  difficulty,  finding 
there  Captain  Patrick  and  the  Massachusetts  con- 
tingent. Putting  the  wounded  on  the  ships,  the 
uninjured  men  returned  in  triumph  by  land  to 
Say  brook. 

The  last  council  of  the  Pequot  nation  was  held 
on  the  day  following  the  capture  of  the  fort.  It 
is  not  difficult  to  imagine  the  feeling  of  the  par- 
ticipants. They  had  proved,  even  to  themselves, 
that  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  resist  the  stran- 
gers in  the  field  ;  and  it  seems  to  have  been  as  im- 
possible for  them  to  conceive  the  notion  of  surren- 
der. Having  first  put  to  death  every  relative  of 
Uncas  within  their  reach,  they  came  to  a  Roman 
resolution.  The  route  by  which  they  had  origi- 
nally entered  Connecticut  was  now  blocked  by 
the  new  English  towns  ;  but  there  was  a  possible 
road  of  return  along  the  Sound,  where  there  were 
as  yet  no  settlements.  Burning  their  villages  and 
crops,  they  set  out  on  their  desperate  venture. 
Thirty  of  the  men,  with  many  of  the  women  and 
children,  soon  abandoned  it  and  returned  to  their 
old  home,  where  they  took  refuge  in  a  swamp. 
Toward  the  end  of  June,  a  Massachusetts  party  of 
one  hundred  and  twenty  men  under  Stoughton 
was  guided  to  their  hiding  place  by  the  Narragan- 
setts,  who  had  not  ventured  to  attack  them,  but 


THE  PEdUOT  WAR.  43 

said  they  were  "  holding  them  "  for  the  English. 
The  Pequots  met  their  fate  calmly  and  without 
resistance.  All  the  men  were  put  to  death  in 
cold  blood  with  the  exception  of  two,  who  prom- 
ised to  guide  the  party  to  the  hiding  place  of  Sas- 
sacus  ;  and  even  these,  proving  unwilling  to  fulfill 
their  bargain,  were  subsequently  killed.  Thirty- 
three  of  the  eighty  women  were  presented  to  the 
Indian  allies  ;  the  remainder  were  sent  to  Massa- 
chusetts and  sold  as  slaves. 

The  main  body  of  the  tribe  pursued  their  march 
for  the  Hudson  under  Sassacus  and  Mononotto. 
While  crossing  the  Connecticut,  they  came  upon 
three  white  men  in  a  canoe,  killed  them  after  a 
stout  resistance,  and  hung  their  bodies  on  the 
trees  upon  the  shore.  After  passing  Saybrook, 
they  were  driven  by  lack  of  supplies  to  take  a 
route  close  to  the  shore,  in  order  to  dig  shell-fish. 
Such  circumstances  were  not  favorable  for  a  forced 
march  ;  the  daily  journeys  grew  shorter  ;  and  that 
keen-scented  hound,  Uncas,  was  on  their  track. 
Stoughton's  men  had  joined  Mason,  and  the  com- 
bined force  had  taken  ship  at  Saybrook  to  pursue 
by  the  Sound,  while  Uncas  and  his  men  searched 
the  shore.  Stragglers  from  the  main  body  were 
occasionally  met,  and  one  incident  will  indicate 
their  fate.  Near  Guilford,  a  Pequot  chief  with  a 
few  men  was  sighted.  Escaping  from  view  for  a 
few  minutes,  the  fugitives  hid  at  the  end  of  the 
cape  which  juts  out  from  the  eastern  side  of  the 


44  CONNECTICUT. 

harbor.  Uncas  searched  the  opposite  side  of  the 
harbor,  but  sent  part  of  his  men  to  search  the 
eastern  cape.  Driven  from  their  refuge,  the  Pe- 
quots  swam  across  the  harbor  and  were  shot  as 
they  landed  by  the  Mohegans.  Uncas  cut  off  the 
head  of  the  Pequot  chief  and  lodged  it  in  the 
branches  of  an  oak,  where  it  hung  for  years,  giv- 
ing the  place  the  local  name  of  Sachem's  Head. 

About  the  time  when  the  pursuers  had  reached 
the  place  where  the  town  of  Fairfield  was  after- 
wards planted,  a  Pequot  was  captured  who  was 
found  willing,  in  return  for  life,  to  engage  to  kill 
or  betray  Sassacus.  He  kept  his  agreement.  He 
joined  the  main  body,  and,  when  suspected  and 
forced  to  flee,  brought  back  word  that  the  main 
body  of  the  Pequots  had  taken  post  in  a  swamp, 
the  stronghold  of  a  local  sachem,  near  Greenfield 
Hill.  The  untiring  pursuers  set  out  at  once  for 
the  place,  some  twenty-five  miles  away,  found  it, 
and  undertook  to  surround  the  swamp.  There 
were  really  two  swamps,  a  lai-ger  and  a  smaller, 
separated  by  a  neck  of  firm  ground  covered  with 
bushes.  After  a  hand-to-hand  struggle,  the  be- 
siegers succeeded  in  cutting  down  the  bushes  and 
reducing  the  coverts  to  one,  which  their  numbers 
were  sufficient  to  surround  efficiently.  A  call  for 
surrender  was  then  sent  in.  It  was  accepted  by 
the  local  tribe  on  whose  hospitality  the  Pequots 
had  forced  themselves,  and  by  the  women  and 
children  of  the  Pequots,  so  that  the  number  of  the 


THE  PEQUOT  WAR.  45 

besieged  was  reduced  from  three  hundred  to  one 
hundred.  Those  who  were  left  were  the  picked 
men  of  the  tribe.  They  saw  before  them  the 
strangers  who  had  suddenly  flung  them  from  their 
supremacy  to  their  present  position,  and  they  had 
a  savage  preference  of  death  to  surrender.  They 
rushed  so  furiously  on  the  messenger  that  the 
English  found  difiiculty  in  rescuing  him.  All 
night  long  they  crept  up  to  the  border  of  the 
swamp  and  shot  their  ineffectual  arrows  at  the 
besiegers ;  and  in  the  gray  of  the  next  morning 
they  made  their  last  burst  for  freedom.  In  a  heavy 
fog  they  rushed  on  that  part  of  the  English  line 
commanded  by  Patrick,  and  the  fight  at  once  be- 
came so  furious  that  the  rest  of  the  English  force 
had  to  be  brought  up  to  Patrick's  assistance.  In 
the  confusion,  about  seventy  of  the  hundred  Pe- 
quots  burst  through  and  got  off ;  but  many  of  them 
were  found  dead  in  the  pursuit.  The  subsequent 
course  of  the  survivors  is  not  known.  There  is  a 
tradition  that  they  made  their  way  to  the  moun- 
tainous region  of  western  North  Carolina,  and 
that,  forty  years  afterward,  the  intelligence  of 
King  Philip's  war  brought  them  or  their  children 
as  far  north  as  Virginia,  on  their  way  back  to 
strike  another  blow  at  the  English,  when  they 
were  stopped  by  hearing  of  Philip's  death. 

Sassacus  and  Mononotto  had  left  their  tribe 
before  the  swamp  fight,  either  overwhelmed  with 
unpopularity,  or  unable  to  spur  the  remainder  of 


46  CONNECTICUT. 

the  tribe  to  the  necessary  celerity  of  movement. 
Their  party  of  thirty  or  forty  men  escaped  to  the 
Mohawks ;  but  their  new  hosts  put  them  all  to 
death,  sending  their  scalps  to  the  English  to  relieve 
them  from  further  anxiety.  Only  Mononotto  es- 
caped, and  it  is  not  known  what  became  of  him. 
His  wife,  with  her  children,  was  among  the  cap- 
tives at  the  swamp.  It  is  pleasant  to  record  that 
she  had  been  very  kind  to  the  two  captured  Eng- 
lish girls,  and  that  Governor  Winthrop  gave  di- 
rections that  she  should  be  treated  with  corre- 
sponding kindness.  All  the  prisoners,  even  in- 
cluding the  wife  of  Mononotto,  were  made  slaves, 
some  being  kept  in  Connecticut,  and  others  sent 
to  Massachusetts  or  the  West  Indies.  They 
proved,  however,  most  unsatisfactory  slaves,  and 
their  servitude  was  in  almost  every  case  soon  ter- 
minated by  death. 

The  downfall  of  the  Pequots  inured  largely  to 
the  benefit  of  Uncas.  Many  of  the  original  tribe 
took  membership  in  the  Mohegan  branch,  though 
some  preferred  to  join  the  Narragansetts  or  the 
Long  Island  Indians.  It  was  not  long  before  the 
jealous  Narragansetts  called  Uncas  to  account  be- 
fore the  equally  jealous  colonists  for  harboring 
Pequots  to  such  an  extent  as  to  make  his  own 
power  a  source  of  possible  danger.  An  investiga- 
tion showed  that  there  were  still  at  large  some 
two  hundred  Pequots,  half  of  which  number  were 
given  to  Uncas  and  the  rest  to  the  Narragansett 


THE  PEQUOT  WAR.  47 

chiefs.  Late  in  1638,  the  delicate  negotiation  was 
closed  by  a  treaty  between  the  Connecticut  dele- 
gates, Miantonoraoh  for  the  Narragansetts,  and 
Uncas.  The  two  high  contracting  Indian  parties 
were  to  retain  their  respective  Pequots,  paying  an 
annual  tribute  for  them  and  incorporating  them 
into  their  tribes.  Connecticut  was  to  have  all  the 
territory  formerly  occupied  by  the  Pequots,  and 
was  to  act  as  umpire  in  any  quarrel  between  Un- 
cas and  Miantonomoh.  The  former  lords  of  the 
soil  had  disappeared,  and  the  stranger  had  taken 
their  place. 

The  tripartite  treaty  of  1638  settled  the  su- 
premacy of  the  English  for  the  future.  Purchases 
of  lands  from  the  Indians  went  on  with  increasing 
frequency  until  prohibited  by  the  general  court 
in  1663.  Even  Uncas  was  unwary  enough  to 
make  such  transfers  ;  and  in  one  of  them,  in  1640, 
in  return  for  "  five  and  a  half  yards  of  trucking 
cloth,  with  stockings  and  other  things,"  he  is  said 
to  have  transferred  to  the  commonwealth  his 
whole  territory,  covering  the  whole  northern  por- 
tion of  New  London  County,  with  the  southern 
portion  of  Tolland  and  Windham  counties.  The 
Mohegans,  however,  insisted  that  the  transaction 
was  only  a  covenant  to  sell  their  lands  to  no  white 
men  without  first  giving  the  commonwealth  an 
opportunity  to  buy,  and  their  claims  were  a  long- 
standing source  of  difficulty. 

Miantonomoh  was  not  satisfied  with  the  treaty 


48  CONNECTICUT. 

of  1638.  It  is  not  probable  that  he  would  have 
been  permanently  satisfied  with  any  treaty  which 
left  the  parvenu  Uncas  in  the  position  of  a  great 
chief.  An  attack  made  by  Uncas  upon  a  chief 
related  to  Miantonomoh  furnished  an  opportune 
casus  belli.  With  a  discretion  worthy  of  a  more 
highly  civilized  monarch,  Miantonomoh  postponed 
the  declaration  of  war  to  the  more  urgent  neces- 
sity of  making  war.  The  whole  power  of  the 
Narragansetts  was  secretly  set  in  motion  for  the 
Mohegan  country.  Uncas  was  not  asleep.  His 
runners  saw  the  host  of  the  enemy  crossing  a  ford, 
and  carried  the  intelligence  to  their  chief  at  his 
fort  near  the  present  city  of  Norwich.  When  the 
Narragansetts  found  the  lair  of  the  Mohegan  chief, 
they  found  that  they  had  to  deal  with  the  whole 
strength  of  his  tribe,  which  he  had  had  time  to 
call  in. 

Uncas  had  felt  himself  strong  enough  to  ad- 
vance a  few  miles,  though  he  had  but  half  the 
force  of  his  enemy,  for  he  relied  with  confidence 
on  the  mingling  of  unscrupulous  treachery  and 
headlong  courage  which  had  been  the  Pequot  title 
to  the  soil  from  the  beginning.  He  signaled  for 
a  parley  as  soon  as  the  Narragansetts  came  within 
hearing,  and,  meeting  the  Narragansett  chief  be- 
tween the  lines,  appealed  to  him  to  prevent  a 
needless  effusion  of  blood  by  a  single  combat  of 
the  leaders.  Miantonomoh  rejected  the  proposal, 
perhaps  with  some  contempt,  and  Uncas  at  once 


THE  PEQUOT  WAR.  49 

gave  the  signal  for  which  his  men  had  been  wait- 
ing, by  dropping  prone  upon  the  ground.  His 
men  instantly  poured  a  flight  of  arrows  upon  the 
Narragansetts,  and  followed  it  by  a  charge,  which 
Uncas  rose  and  headed.  The  battle  lasted  but  a 
moment ;  the  Narragansetts  fled,  almost  without 
striking  a  blow;  and  Miantonomoh,  deserted  by 
his  people  and  over- weighted  by  an  English  corse- 
let, was  caught,  after  a  long  chase,  by  Uncas  and 
one  of  his  sachems.  The  captive  kept  a  stolid  si- 
lence, refusing  to  beg  for  mercy,  even  by  gesture. 

The  tender  mercies  of  Uncas  would  doubtless 
have  been  swift  to  visit  Miantonomoh  but  for  one 
circumstance.  The  Rhode  Island  settlers  were 
not  forgetful  of  the  benefits  which  they  had  re- 
ceived at  the  hands  of  the  Narragansetts  ;  and  one 
of  them,  Gorton,  of  Warwick,  sent  Uncas  a  violent 
message,  threatening  him  with  English  vengeance 
if  he  injured  Miantonomoh.  Uncas,  unable  to  dis- 
criminate clearly  between  English  sectaries  or  to 
balance  the  respective  power  of  white  faces,  carried 
his  prisoner  to  Hartford  for  trial.  The  governor 
and  magistrates  referred  him  to  the  commissioners 
of  the  united  colonies,  who  were  to  meet  at  Boston 
in  the  following  September.  Until  then,  Mianto- 
nomoh remained  at  Hartford. 

The  commissioners,  much  as  they  dreaded  Mian- 
tonomoh, did  not  see  their  way  clear  to  condemning 
him  to  death.  In  the  emergency  they  summoned 
into  council  five  of  the  delegates  to  a  synod  then 


60  CONNECTICUT. 

sitting  at  Boston.  These  counselors  rode  rough- 
shod over  the  scruples  which  had  given  pause  to 
the  lay  mind.  To  them  the  Narragansett  was  a 
Philistine,  an  Amalekite,  who  was  of  necessity 
guilty.  They  decided  that  he  must  die,  and  the 
commissioners  acquiesced  in  the  decision.  They 
directed  the  Connecticut  authorities  to  give  him 
up  to  Uncas  for  execution  outside  of  the  common- 
wealth's jurisdiction,  to  detail  witnesses  to  see  that 
all  should  be  done  in  order,  and  to  defend  Uncas 
against  any  threatened  vengeance  for  the  act. 
The  most  shocking  attendant  circumstance  is  the 
fact  that  the  announcement  of  the  sentence  was 
postponed  until  the  Connecticut  commissioners  had 
safely  reached  Hartford,  for  the  reason  that  Mian- 
tonomoh  himself  had  given  notice  that  his  people 
intended  to  capture  them  on  the  way  and  hold 
them  as  hostages  for  his  safety.  It  is  no  wonder 
that  so  dangerous  a  chieftain  should  find  no  mercy. 
The  Narragansett  chief  was  delivered  to  the 
custody  of  Uncas,  two  Englishmen  joining  the 
party  to  be  witnesses  to  the  execution.  Wlien  the 
Mohegans  had  reached  the  scene  of  the  battle  near 
Norwich,  Uncas  gave  a  signal  to  his  brother,  Wa- 
wequa,  whose  place  was  just  behind  the  captive. 
He  at  once  sunk  his  hatchet  into  Miantonomoh's 
brain,  and  death  followed  instantly.  Uncas  de- 
voured a  piece  of  flesh  cut  from  the  dead  man's 
shoulder,  declaring  it  the  sweetest  meat  he  had 
ever  eaten. 


THE  PEQUOT   WAR.  51 

The  only  serious  difficulties  with  Indians  there- 
after were  in  the  southwest,  and  were  really  off- 
shoots from  the  continual  troubles  between  the 
Dutch  and  the  Indians.  There  were  several  mur- 
ders and  savage  assaults,  the  most  notable  victim 
being  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson,  of  Massachusetts, 
who  had  settled  near  Stamford,  and  was  killed, 
with  some  seventeen  others,  in  a  night  attack 
by  the  Indians.  The  Narragansetts  seem  to  have 
taken  no  concerted  part  in  this  border  warfare. 
They  had  come  to  despair  of  making  head  against 
the  whites  ;  and  their  hopes  of  revenge  were  con- 
centrated on  Uncas  and  his  tribe,  upon  whom  they 
made  repeated  attacks.  Their  only  results  were 
renewed  and  increased  fines  and  tribute  imposed 
by  the  white  supporters  of  Uncas.  About  1658 
these  attacks  ceased,  and  the  Narragansetts  re- 
signed themselves  to  their  fate. 

The  chiefs  to  whom  Pequots  had  been  assigned, 
and  especially  Uncas,  were  so  greedy  and  tyran- 
nical in  their  rule  that  the  conquered  people  began 
to  drift  away  from  them  and  form  scattered  and 
illegal  communities.  One  or  two  of  their  new 
chiefs  showed  themselves  good  friends  of  the  Eng- 
lish ;  and  in  1655  the  New  England  commissioners, 
to  Uncas's  unconcealed  disgust,  consented  to  a  re- 
organization of  the  Pequots  into  two  tribes  under 
chieftains  of  their  own  blood,  Hermon  Garret  and 
Cassasinamon.  In  1667  the  colony  established  a 
reservation  for  Cassasinamon's  tribe  in  the  present 


52  CONNECTICUT. 

township  of  Ledyard,  near  Groton  ;  and  in  1683  a 
settlement  was  assigned  to  the  other  tribe  in  North 
Stonington.  The  original  force  of  the  Pequot  has 
been  persistent  enough  to  carry  their  descendants, 
after  a  fashion,  through  the  intervening  years  in 
which  the  subject  tribes  have  disappeared.  In 
1850  the  Ledyard  settlement  held  989  acres,  and 
the  North  Stonington  settlement  240,  with  a  mon- 
grel population  of  twenty-eight  and  fifteen  persons 
respectively.  In  1880  the  county  of  New  London 
still  held  the  largest  proportion  of  the  Connecti- 
cut "  Indians,"  147  out  of  a  total  of  255  in  the 
State. 

As  the  record  of  Indian  difficulties  ends  with  the 
death  of  Miantonomoh,  the  record  of  Indian  deca- 
dence begins.  Individuals,  under  the  tacit  or  ex- 
press authorization  of  the  general  court,  bought 
lands  of  the  Indian  proprietors ;  and  the  early 
town  records  begin  with  deeds  given  by  a  number 
of  sachems,  whose  unutterable  names  are  only  a 
little  less  awe-inspiring  than  the  hieroglyphics  by 
which  they  are  indicated,  transferring  their  lands 
to  whites  for  the  pettiest  considerations.  Real 
property  titles  in  the  State  are  traced  back  to 
these  Indian  deeds.  When  a  tribe  had  entirely 
gotten  rid  of  the  inheritance,  its  few  remaining 
members  drifted  off  to  other  parts  of  the  country, 
or  became  a  town  charge  as  paupers.  But  the 
general  court  was  careful  so  to  limit  these  trans- 
fers as  not  to  drive  the  few  dangerous  tribes  to 


THE  FEQUOT    WAR.  *  53 

desperation,  and  the  good  results  were  seen  in  tli  • 
outbreak  of  King  Philip's  war  in  1675.  The 
Connecticut  Indians  left  the  colony  free  to  bend 
all  its  energies  to  the  assistance  of  the  sister  col- 
onies. Even  the  Pequots  and  Mohegans  were 
faithful  allies  and  soldiers,  and  enjoyed  the  Indian 
luxuries  of  seeing  the  final  overthrow  of  the  Nar- 
ragansetts,  and  of  executing  Canonchet,  the  son 
of  Miantonomoh. 

Uncas  died  about  1683.  Two  of  his  alleged 
descendants  were  living  in  1800.  His  tribe  and 
its  successive  chiefs  seem  to  have  found  a  fatal  fas- 
cination in  the  process  of  land  transfer,  which  they 
never  could  master.  Drunken  sachems  made  trans- 
fers of  land  which  was  really  the  common  property 
of  the  tribe  ;  or  the  tribe,  having  a  well-founded 
apprehension  of  the  sachem's  weakness  for  strong 
drink,  made  clumsy  attempts  to  make  trust  deeds 
of  their  lands  to  white  men  in  whom  they  confided, 
while  the  trustees  considered  these  instruments  as 
transfers  of  the  fee  simple.  The  result  was  abun- 
dant litigation  ;  and  some  of  the  commonwealth 
difficulties  arising  from  it  will  be  considered  here- 
after. In  1721  a  committee  of  the  general  court 
examined  and  decided  on  these  transfers,  reserving 
some  5,000  acres  to  the  Mohegans,  and  making  the 
tract  inalienable  so  long  as  a  single  Mohegan 
should  survive.  This  arrangement  was  practi- 
cally confirmed  by  royal  commissions  in  1737  and 
17135  on  appeal  by  the  Indians.     The  tribe  sent 


54  CONNECTICUT. 

many  of  its  number  into  the  American  army  dur- 
ing the  Revolution,  and  some  eighteen  of  them 
were  killed.  In  1786  a  few  of  the  survivors,  with 
other  Connecticut  Indians,  went  to  the  Oneida 
country,  in  New  York,  and  there  established  the 
Brothertown  tribe.  There  remained  to  the  tribe 
in  1850  some  2,300  acres  of  its  reservation  at 
Montville,  with  some  sixty  persons  living  on  it, 
and  about  the  same  number  scattered  in  other 
parts  of  the  country. 

However  we  may  discredit  the  accounts  given 
by  the  first  settlers  of  Indian  immorality,  it  is  im- 
possible to  exaggerate  their  subsequent  degrada- 
tion. Ignorant,  poverty-stricken,  unclean,  drunken, 
and  licentious  to  the  lowest  degree,  the  smaller 
Indian  tribes  disappeared  with  startling  rapidity. 
In  1680  there  were  but  five  hundred  warriors  left 
in  the  whole  colony.  In  1774  there  were  only 
eight  left  in  Greenwich,  nine  in  Norwalk,  and 
none  in  Stamford.  There  is  not  now  a  drop  of 
pure  Indian  blood  in  the  State.  The  so-called  In- 
dians are  the  progeny  of  two  centuries  of  irregular 
intercourse  between  Indians,  negroes,  mulattoes, 
and  whites. 

Efforts  have  not  been  wanting  to  civilize  or 
evangelize  the  race,  but  they  have  been  of  little 
avail.  Pierson,  Fitch,  and  Barber  preached  to 
them  with  hardly  any  perceptible  result ;  Gookin 
and  John  Eliot  entered  the  colony  for  the  same 
purpose,  but  withdrew   defeated;    and  the   only 


THE  PEQUOT  WAR.  56 

effort  which  ever  came  to  anything  like  success 
met  it  outside  of  Connecticut.  Eleazar  Wheelock 
began  preaching  at  Lebanon  in  1735.  In  1762 
his  Indian  school  numbered  twenty,  and  he  went 
to  England  to  raise  funds  for  it,  developing  it  into 
what  became  Dartmouth  College.  Among  his 
Connecticut  pupils  he  had  received  in  1743  a  Mo- 
hegan  aged  twenty,  who  took  the  name  of  Samson 
Occom.  After  an  irregular  education  and  service 
as  teacher  on  Long  Island  and  elsewhere,  Occom 
was  ordained  in  1759  by  the  presbytery  of  Suffolk, 
L.  L,  and  became  a  successful  preacher.  He 
stands  out  as  about  the  only  civilized  product  of 
Connecticut  Indian  origin  ;  and  even  he  occasion- 
ally relapsed  into  intoxication,  to  his  own  bitter 
repentance.  He  made  a  part  of  the  Brothertown 
tribe,  and  died  among  its  members  in  1792. 

There  is  little  room  or  excuse  for  romance  in  the 
Indian  history  of  the  commonwealth  ;  and  it  has 
seemed  best  to  bring  it  down  to  its  conclusion  at 
once,  in  order  to  confine  the  subsequent  story  of 
the  commonwealth  to  the  history  of  the  dom- 
inant race. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  CONNECTICUT    COLONIT. 

When  the  Pequot  war  broke  out,  there  were 
but  three  English  settlements  within  the  present 
area  of  Connecticut.  Leaving  Massachusetts,  the 
Connecticut  River  flows  to  the  southwest  and  then 
to  the  southeast,  forming  two  sides  of  a  very  ob- 
tuse and  irregular  angle.  At  the  apex  of  this 
angle,  and  on  the  western  side  of  the  river,  was 
planted  the  town  of  Newtown  (the  present  capital 
city  of  Hartford).  On  the  same  side  of  the  river 
were  Dorchester  (Windsor),  a  few  miles  above 
Hartford,  and  Watertown  (Wethersfield),  a  few 
miles  below  Hartford.  To  the  north,  and  just  be- 
yond the  Massachusetts  boundary  line,  was  Aga- 
wam  (Springfield),  Pynchon's  settlement;  but  it 
was  not  known  for  some  years  whether  it  was  in 
or  beyond  the  jurisdiction  of  the  mother  colony. 
Until  this  was  ascertained,  this  town  was  taken 
and  deemed  to  be  a  part  of  Connecticut.  The 
first  settlers  had  no  notion  of  leaving  government 
behind  them  when  they  left  Massachusetts.  Tlie 
migration  took  place  under  direction  of  eight 
persons,  headed  by  Roger  Ludlow   and  William 


THE   CONNECTICUT  COLONY.  57 

Pynchon,  acting  under  the  commission  from  the 
Massachusetts  General  Court,  which  was  to  be  in 
force  for  only  one  year.  By  the  time  it  exj^ired, 
the  new  colony  had  begun  its  own  system  of  gov- 
ernment. 

The  meeting  of  the  first  legislative  body,  the 
"  Corte,"  was  held  at  Newtown,  April  26,  1636. 
The  three  migrating  towns  at  first  retained  even 
their  Massachusetts  names,  and  this  inchoate  com- 
monwealth government  was  little  more  tlian  a 
consequence  of  the  Massachusetts  commission.  It 
was  not  until  February  21  of  the  next  year  that 
the  name  of  Hartford  was  substituted  for  that  of 
Newtown,  that  of  Wethersfield  for  Watertown, 
and  that  of  Windsor  for  Dorchester.  The  name 
of  Hartford  was  probably  meant  to  commemorate 
the  birthplace  of  Mr.  Stone,  Hertford,  near  Lon- 
don. Windsor  was  taken  from  its  English  name- 
sake ;  and  Wethersfield  was  named  from  Wethers- 
field in  Essex,  England,  the  birthplace  of  one  of 
the  leading  men  of  the  settlement,  John  Talcott, 
commonly  called  "  Tailcoat  "  in  the  records.  For 
a  year  the  court  met  at  the  three  towns  in  turn, 
two  magistrates  from  each  town  making  up  its 
number,  except  when  Pynchon  was  present  and 
raised  the  number  to  seven.  Like  all  the  com- 
monwealth legislatures  of  New  England,  this  one 
exercised  both  legislative  and  judicial  functions, 
taking  from  the  latter  its  title  of  the  "  Corte," 
afterwards  the  "  General  Court,"  as  in  the  Massa- 


68  CONNECTICUT. 

chusetts  charter.  For  the  first  year  its  proceed- 
ings were  confined  to  the  prevention  of  the  trade 
in  muskets  with  the  Indians,  the  enforcement  of 
military  drill,  the  regulation  of  swine  and  other 
animals,  the  appointment  of  constahles,  some  pro- 
bate business,  and  one  suit  at  law,  that  of  a  land 
claimant  against  the  people  of  Wethersfield. 

On  May  1, 1637,  the  legislature,  now  first  called 
the  General  Court,  met  at  Hartford  in  a  form  more 
fitting  for  a  separate  commonwealth.  In  addition 
to  the  six  magistrates  there  were  now  present 
nine  "  committees,"  or  deputies,  three  from  each 
town.  Hooker,  in  his  letter  to  Winthrop,  states 
that  the  "  committees  "  were  chosen  by  the  towns ; 
that  they  met  at  Hartford,  elected  the  six  magis- 
trates, and  gave  them  an  oath  of  office.  The  mi- 
gratory commission  from  Massachusetts  was  thus 
supplanted  by  a  new  government,  deriving  its 
authority  directly  from  the  towns.  In  the  dis- 
tinction between  deputies  and  magistrates,  slight 
at  first,  there  was  the  germ  of  the  commonwealth's 
subsequent  bi-cameral  system.  Springfield  was 
represented  occasionally  during  1637-38,  and  her 
affairs  were  considered  to  be  under  the  jurisdiction 
of  the  new  colony.  For  the  next  two  years  Spring- 
field is  neither  represented  nor  referred  to,  the 
general  court  confining  its  attention  to  the  other 
three  towns.  On  June  2, 1641,  the  Massachusetts 
General  Court  recognized  Springfield,  on  petition 
therefrom,  as  one  of  its  towns,  and  appointed  com- 


THE  CONNECTICUT  COLONY.  59 

missioners  to  define  the  boundary  line  between 
the  two  colonies. 

The  General  Court,  under  its  new  constitution, 
at  once  assumed  a  wider  range  of  action.  Its  first 
meeting  declared  war  against  the  Pequots  ;  its 
second,  June  2, 1637,  ordered  a  draft  of  thirty  men 
"  to  sett  downe  in  the  Pequoitt  Countrey  and 
River  in  place  convenient  to  mayntaine  o"^  right  y* 
God  by  Conquest  hath  given  to  vs."  At  the 
meeting  June  26,  it  was  decided  that  Haynes  and 
Ludlow  should  "  parle  with  the  bay  [Massachu- 
setts] about  o'  settinge  downe  in  the  Pequoitt 
Countrey."  For  Massachusetts  had  advanced  a 
claim  to  the  Pequot  soil,  based  partly  on  the  ex- 
ceedingly hazy  geography  of  the  time,  and  partly 
on  conquest ;  while  Connecticut  had  a  keen  per- 
ception that  this  section  was  essential  to  her  com- 
monwealth's development,  and  meant  to  hold  it. 
In  the  end  her  determination  prevailed,  and  she 
still  keeps  the  Pequot  country. 

It  would  hardly  be  too  strong  to  say  that  the 
establishment  of  the  town  and  of  the  church  was 
coincident :  the  universal  agreement  in  religion 
made  town  government  and  church  government 
but  two  sides  of  the  same  medal,  and  the  same 
persons  took  part  in  both.  In  fact,  the  three  orig- 
inal settlements  had  entered  the  new  territory  not 
only  as  completely  organized  towns,  but  as  com- 
pletely organized  churches,  only  one  (Watertown) 
having   left   its   minister    behind.     The   original 


60  CONNECTICUT. 

church  of  Watertown  is  therefore  still  in  Massa- 
chusetts ;  the  original  churches  of  Cambridge 
(Newtown)  and  Dorchester  are  now  in  Hartford 
and  Windsor.  For  nearly  a  century  (until  1727) 
the  same  persons  in  each  town  discussed  and  de- 
cided ecclesiastical  and  civil  affairs  indifferently, 
acting  as  a  town  or  a  church  meeting.  The  same 
body  laid  the  taxes,  called  the  minister,  and  pro- 
vided for  his  salary.  When  the  gradual  recogni- 
tion of  other  sects  reduced  the  Congregational 
order  from  its  exclusive  to  a  merely  predominant 
position  in  the  commonwealth,  a  trace  of  the  old 
system  remained  in  the  Congregational  churches 
in  the  dual  control  of  the  "  church  and  society  " 
in  each  congregation,  —  the  former,  composed  of 
church-members,  having  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  ; 
the  latter,  composed  of  pew-holders  and  contribu- 
tors, having  a  financial  and  administrative  control, 
and  joint  action  of  the  two  being  usually  neces- 
sary. The  "  society  "  represents  the  former  town 
meeting.  The  Connecticut  churches  agreed  with 
those  of  Massachusetts  in  their  Congregational 
system  ;  and  their  pastors  and  teachers  were  called 
upon  again  and  again  to  make  the  journey  through 
the  wilderness  to  Boston,  in  order  to  take  part  in 
the  synods  made  necessary  by  the  vexed  questions 
of  Puritan  belief  and  practice.  Connecticut,  how- 
ever, did  not  agree  with  Massachusetts  in  making 
church-membership  a  prerequisite  to  voting  and 
holding  oflBce.      In  this  omission,  it  maintained 


THE  CONNECTICUT  COLONY.  61 

the  complete  independence  both  of  its  churches 
and  of  its  towns ;  but  it  gave  rise  to  many  of  its 
subsequent  ecclesiastical  difficulties.  It  was  largely 
a  dispute  on  this  point  that  had  sent  the  first  set- 
tlers into  the  wilderness,  and  the  original  three 
towns  would  undoubtedly  have  insisted  on  local 
freedom  in  this  respect.  When  new  towns  were 
formed,  offshoots  from  the  first  three,  it  was  nat- 
ural in  the  eyes  of  both  town  and  colony  that  this 
freedom  should  be  continued  to  them,  and  none  of 
them  desired  any  ecclesiastical  restriction  on  the 
right  of  suffrage.  Those  who  desired  such  an  ar- 
rangement went  into  the  New  Haven  jurisdiction, 
of  which  it  was  an  essential  part. 

The  independence  of  the  town  was  a  political 
fact  which  has  colored  the  whole  history  of  the 
commonwealth,  and,  through  it,  of  the  United 
States.  Even  in  Massachusetts,  after  the  real  be- 
ginning of  government,  the  town  was  subordinate 
to  the  colony  ;  and,  though  the  independence  of 
the  churches  forced  a  considerable  local  freedom 
there,  it  was  not  so  fundamental  a  fact  as  in  Con- 
necticut. Here  the  three  original  towns  had  in 
the  beginning  left  commonwealth  control  behind 
them  when  they  left  the  parent  colony.  They  had 
gone  into  the  wilderness,  each  the  only  organized 
political  power  within  its  jurisdiction.  Since  their 
prototypes,  the  little  tuns  of  the  primeval  German 
forest,  there  had  been  no  such  examples  of  the 
perfect  capacity  of  the  political  cell,  the  "  town," 


62  CONNECTICUT. 

for  self-government.  In  Connecticut  it  was  the 
towns  that  created  the  commonwealth ;  and  the 
consequent  federative  idea  has  steadily  influenced 
the  colony  and  State  alike.  In  Connecticut,  the 
governing  principle,  due  to  the  original  constitu- 
tion of  things  rather  than  to  the  policy  of  the 
commonwealth,  has  been  that  the  town  is  the  re- 
siduary legatee  of  political  power ;  that  it  is  the 
State  which  is  called  upon  to  make  out  a  clear 
case  for  powers  to  which  it  lays  claim  ;  and  that 
the  towns  have  a  primd  facie  case  in  their  favor 
wherever  a  doubt  arises. 

All  this  is  so  like  the  standard  theory  of  the 
relations  of  the  States  to  the  federal  government 
that  it  is  necessary  to  notice  the  peculiar  exact- 
ness with  which  the  relations  of  Connecticut  towns 
to  the  commonwealth  are  proportioned  to  the  re- 
lations of  the  commonwealth  to  the  United  States. 
In  other  States,  power  runs  from  the  State  up- 
wards and  from  the  State  downwards  ;  in  Connec- 
ticut, the  towns  have  always  been  to  the  common- 
wealth as  the  commonwealth  to  the  Union.  It 
was  to  be  the  privilege  of  Connecticut  to  keep  the 
notion  of  this  federal  relation  alive  until  it  could 
be  made  the  fundamental  law  of  all  the  common- 
wealths in  1787-89.  In  this  respect,  the  life  prin- 
ciple of  the  American  Union  may  be  traced 
straight  back  to  the  primitive  union  of  the  three 
little  settlements  on  the  bank  of  the  Connecticut 
River.      All  this,  however,  may  be  left  to  the 


THE  CONNECTICUT   COLONY.  63 

chapter  on  the  Convention  of  1787.  The  point  in 
question  here  is  the  introduction  of  the  democratic 
element  into  the  American  system,  and  the  claims 
of  Connecticut  to  the  credit  or  responsibility  for 
it. 

The  first  constitution  of  Connecticut  —  the  first 
written  constitution,  in  the  modern  sense  of  the 
term,  as  a  permanent  limitation  on  governmental 
power,  known  in  history,  and  certainly  the  first 
American  constitution  of  government  to  embody 
the  democratic  idea  —  was  adopted  by  a  general 
assembly,  or  popular  convention,  of  the  planters 
of  the  three  towns,  held  at  Hartford,  January  14, 
1638  (9).  The  common  opinion  is  that  democ- 
racy came  into  the  American  system  through  the 
compact  made  in  the  cabin  of  the  Mayflower, 
though  that  instrument  was  based  on  no  political 
principle  whatever,  and  began  with  a  formal  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  king  as  the  source  of  all 
authority.  It  was  the  power  of  the  crown  "  by 
virtue "  of  which  "  equal  laws  "  were  to  be  en- 
acted, and  the  "  covenant "  was  merely  a  make- 
shift to  meet  a  temporary  emergency :  it  had 
not  a  particle  of  political  significance,  nor  was 
democracy  an  impelling  force  in  it.  It  must  be 
admitted  that  the  Plymouth  system  was  acci- 
dentally democratic,  but  it  was  from  the  absence 
of  any  great  need  for  government,  or  for  care 
to  preserve  homogeneity  in  religion,  not  from  po- 
litical purpose,  as  in  Connecticut.     It  was  a  pas- 


64  CONNECTICUT. 

sive,  not  an  active  system ;  and  it  cannot  be  said 
to  have  influenced  other  American  common- 
wealths. Another  though  less  prevalent  opinion 
is,  that  the  first  democratic  commonwealth  was 
the  mother  colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay.  The 
intensely  democratic  feeling  subsequently  devel- 
oped in  Massachusetts  has  been  reflected  on  her 
early  history,  and  has  given  it  a  light  which  never 
belonged  to  it.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  not  difiiculc 
to  show  that  the  settlement  of  Connecticut  was  it- 
self merely  a  secession  of  the  democratic  element 
from  Mf^ssachusetts,  and  that  the  Massachusetts 
freemen  owed  their  final  emancipation  from  a  the- 
ocracy to  the  example  given  them  by  the  eldest 
daughter  of  the  old  commonwealth. 

He  who  studies  carefully  the  history  of  Massa- 
chusetts from  1629  until  1690  will  see  that  there 
was  a  constant  struggle  in  that  colony  between 
two  conflicting  forces,  and  that  its  earlier  phases 
were  coincident  and  complicated  with  the  Connec- 
ticut secession.  The  better  blood  of  the  colony 
was  determined  to  establish  a  privileged  class  of 
some  sort ;  and  the  bulk  of  the  freemen,  instinc- 
tively inclined  to  democracy,  found  it  difficult  to 
resist  the  claims  of  blood,  wealth,  and  influence, 
backed  by  the  pronounced  support  of  the  church. 
For  the  ministers  of  the  colony,  in  spite  of  their 
evidently  conscientious  wish  to  separate  church  and 
state,  seem  to  have  had  no  notion  of  the  real  boun- 
daries between  the  two,  and  were  constantly  in 


THE   CONNECTICUT  COLONY.  65 

favor  of  measures  which  tended  straight  to  the 
establishment  of  an  oligarchy.  Whenever  the 
dominant  class  desired  to  overcome  the  rising  op- 
position of  the  commons,  the  readiest  and  surest 
means  was  to  offer  to  submit  the  question  to  the 
decision  of  the  "  elders,"  or  ministers.  The  com- 
mons never  ventured  to  refuse  ;  and  the  ministers 
never  failed  to  decide  in  accordance  with  the 
wishes  of  the  dominant  class.  The  expressions  of 
dissenting  writers,  as  to  the  "  spiritual  tyranny  " 
in  early  Massachusetts,  must  be  taken  always  with 
very  large  allowance.  Ecclesiastical  punishments 
were  not  severe,  according  to  the  universal  stand- 
ard of  the  times  ;  and  the  result  of  hostile  research 
seems  curiously  inadequate  to  the  indignation 
which  has  been  spent  in  it.  But  one  must  admit 
that  the  early  Massachusetts  system,  whatever 
else  it  may  have  been,  was  not  even  meant  to  be 
a  democracy.  "  Democracy,"  said  Cotton,  the 
spokesman  of  the  dominant  class,  "  I  do  not  con- 
ceive that  ever  God  did  ordain  as  a  fit  government 
either  for  church  or  commonwealth." 

The  question  appeared  with  the  transfer  of  the 
charter  government  from  England  to  Massachu- 
setts. The  charter  gave  to  the  governor,  eighteen 
assistants,  and  the  freemen,  assembled  in  a  single 
chamber  as  the  *'  great  and  general  Court,"  the 
power  of  electing  officers  and  making  laws  and 
ordinances.  The  dominant  class  of  the  colony 
was   determined   to   restrict    this   general   court, 

5 


66  CONNECTICUT. 

which  the  superior  numbers  of  the  freemen  could 
control,  to  the  functions  of  a  mere  electing  body, 
leaving  to  the  assistants,  what  the  charter  did  not 
give  them,  the  duties  of  making  and  enforcing 
laws.  The  first  meeting  of  the  Court  of  Assist- 
ants in  Massachusetts  made  the  support  of  the 
clergy  a  commonwealth  matter ;  the  second  as- 
sumed control  of  the  admission  of  inhabitants  to 
the  towns ;  and,  early  in  1632,  the  settlement  of 
town  boundaries,  and  the  control  of  town  inter- 
ests, were  assumed  by  the  assistants  without  any 
authority,  either  from  the  charter  or  from  the 
towns.  Secular  and  ecclesiastical  influences  were 
strong  enough  to  induce  the  freemen,  in  1630,  to 
confirm  the  usurped  powers  of  the  Court  of  Assist- 
ants ;  and  this  was  followed  in  the  next  year  by 
the  exclusion  of  all  but  church-members  from 
"  the  liberties  of  the  Commonwealth,"  that  is, 
from  voting.  So  wide  was  the  effect  that  Hut- 
chinson asserts,  and  Judge  Story  approves  the  esti- 
mate, that  five-sixths  of  the  people  were  still  dis- 
franchised as  late  as  1676.  The  whole  system 
was  upheld  by  Governor  Winthrop  of  Massachu- 
setts, in  a  letter  to  Hooker,  on  the  ground  that  it 
was  unwarrantable  and  unsafe  to  refer  matters 
"  of  counsel  or  judicature "  to  the  body  of  the 
people,  because  "  the  best  part  is  always  the  least, 
and  of  that  best  part  the  wiser  part  is  always  the 
lesser."  The  people,  or  that  better  part  of  them 
who  should  be  admitted  to  vote,  were  to  choose 


THE  CONNECTICUT  COLONY.  67 

the  Court  of  Assistants  ;  but  that  wiser  body  was 
to  make  the  laws  and  enforce  them. 

Such  a  system  was  certain  to  arouse  dissatisfac- 
tion ;  and  a  due  regard  to  the  fact  will  make  it 
easier  to  understand  why  the  Massachusetts  char- 
ter was  finally  lost  so  tamely.  Dissatisfaction,  to 
the  honor  of  the  Massachusetts  freemen,  first  took 
the  shape  of  assertion  of  local  liberty,  of  town 
freedom  rather  than  of  individual  freedom.  There 
were  attempts  at  independent  town  action  before 
1634 ;  but  the  curious  and  perhaps  significant  fact 
is  that  nearly  all  of  them  took  place  in  the  three 
towns  which  afterwards  made  up  the  Connecticut 
secession.  The  towns  in  1634  informally  sent  two 
deputies  each  to  Boston  to  get  a  sight  of  the  pa- 
tent. The  sight  was  enough  to  expose  the  usur- 
pation of  the  assistants  ;  and  at  the  general  court 
in  May  the  freemen  would  make  no  elections  un- 
til their  deputies  had  been  recognized  as  a  factor 
in  the  government.  Nevertheless,  influence,  and 
particularly  that  of  the  ministers,  was  still  strong 
enough  to  secure  the  passage  of  an  act,  the  very 
next  year,  constituting  a  council  for  life,  consisting 
at  first  of  three  members,  but  meant  to  be  larger 
in  future.  There  is  every  indication  of  an  organ- 
ized design  to  establish  an  hereditary  order,  or  at 
least  a  life  privilege  for  certain  classes,  in  order 
to  attract  influential  and  wealthy  immigrants  from 
the  mother  country ;  but  luckily  Massachusetts 
freemen  knew  how  to  cut  the  knot.      When  it 


68  CONNECTICUT. 

was  proposed  in  1639  to  give  the  governor  a  life 
tenure,  the  freemen  answered  by  taking  all  "mag- 
istratical "  powers  from  the  council,  and  that  body 
died  the  death  soon  after.  Time  would  fail  in 
telling  the  further  details  of  the  struggle,  —  the 
success  of  the  deputies  in  maintaining  that  share  in 
the  government  which  the  charter  had  not  given 
them ;  the  efforts  of  the  assistants  to  secure  the 
"  negative  voice,"  by  which  they  were  to  have  a 
veto  on  the  deputies ;  the  famous  "  sow  business," 
which  convulsed  the  colony,  and  brought  the 
"negative  voice"  into  common  disrepute;  and  the 
•final  compromise  in  1644,  by  which  the  introduc- 
tion of  a  bi-cameral  system  gave  both  the  assistants 
and  the  deputies  a  negative  voice.  All  these  be- 
long to  Massachusetts  history,  and  were  the  efforts 
of  democracy  to  get  its  head  out  of  water. 

In  every  point,  the  ministers  had  been  on  the 
side  of  the  assistants.  The  latter  had  always  been 
willing  to  refer  every  disputed  question  to  the  el- 
ders, and  had  always  been  supported.  The  stand- 
ing grievance  had  been  that  the  assistants  would 
not  admit  the  right  of  the  general  court  (which 
really  meant  the  deputies,  or  the  freemen  whom 
they  represented)  to  adopt  a  body  of  laws  as  a 
permanent  limitation  on  the  judicial  powers  of  the 
assistants  ;  they  wished  to  decide  every  case  "  on 
its  own  merits."  Winthrop  himself  acknowledged, 
in  1639,  that  the  people  "  had  long  desired  a  body 
of  laws,  and  thought  their  condition  very  unsafe 


TEE  CONNECTICUT  COLONY.  69 

while  so  much  power  rested  in  the  discretion 
of  magistrates ;  "  and  he  adds  the  very  credible 
note  that  the  magistrates  and  some  of  the  minis- 
ters were  "  not  very  forward  in  this  matter."  In 
December,  1641,  a  brief  code  of  laws  was  extorted 
by  the  freemen  ;  but  it  left  great  blanks,  which 
the  assistants  still  persisted  in  filling  as  they  saw 
fit.  In  1645  the  elders  formally  declared  that  the 
freemen  were  to  choose  the  assistants,  but  that  the 
authority  of  the  latter  was  not  derived  from  the 
freemen  or  to  be  limited  by  them,  and  that  they 
were  to  decide  according  to  the  word  of  God  in 
the  absence  of  express  law.  The  deputies  yielded ; 
and  it  was  not  until  1649  that  they  at  last  secured 
a  complete  code  of  laws. 

Reference  has  already  been  made  to  the  patent 
differences  between  the  three  migrating  towns  and 
the  five  which  they  left  behind  them,  and  to  the 
probability  that  there  was  some  political  difference 
to  account  for  them.  A  regard  to  the  coincident 
struggle  against  class  power  in  Massachusetts  will 
make  it  still  more  probable  that  the  migrating 
towns  were  simply  those  which  did  not  choose  to 
continue  the  struggle  longer  at  home,  but  pre- 
ferred to  establish  a  more  democratic  system  for 
themselves  in  the  wilderness,  and  without  any 
charter.  Hooker  was  undoubtedly  the  strength 
of  the  migration  ;  and  he  had  been  so  notoriously 
opposed  to  Cotton  in  the  old  colony  that  it  would 
be  reasonable  to  presume  that  he  differed  toto  coelo 


70  CONNECTICUT. 

from  Cotton's  views  as  to  democracy.  In  answer- 
ing the  letter  of  Winthrop  mentioned  above,  he 
is  evidently  cautious,  and  unwilling  to  provoke 
an  argument;  but  he  dissents  from  Wintbrop's 
entire  position,  and  says  :  "  In  matters  of  greater 
consequence,  which  concern  the  common  good,  a 
general  council,  chosen  by  all,  to  transact  busi- 
nesses which  concern  all,  I  conceive,  under  favor, 
most  suitable  to  rule  and  most  safe  for  relief  of 
the  whole."  The  difference  between  him  and 
Winthrop  is  marked  ;  and  it  would  not  be  difficult 
to  say,  from  these  two  letters,  which  of  them  held 
the  seed  from  which  sprang  the  modern  American 
commonwealth.  Again,  the  first  step  of  the  Con- 
necticut settlers  was  to  secure  what  their  Massa- 
chusetts brethren  were  still  struggling  for  —  pop- 
ular control  of  legislation.  Codes  of  laws  were 
merely  the  symbol :  democracy  wanted  the  recog- 
nition of  the  deputies,  the  direct  representatives  of 
the  towns,  as  a  factor  in  the  government ;  and  this 
was  secured  by  the  constitution  of  1639.  It  even 
provided  a  way  by  which  the  deputies,  if  the  gov- 
ernor and  the  "  magistrates  "  (answering  to  the 
Massachusetts  title  of  "  assistants  ")  refused  to  call 
them  together,  might  meet  and  organize  a  supreme 
legislature  without  their  associates,  —  a  provision 
wholly  inexplicable  without  a  careful  regard  to  the 
contemporary  struggle  in  Massachusetts. 

Here   the  evidence   that  government  "of   the 
people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people,"  first  took 


THE   CONNECTICUT  COLONY.  71 

shape  in  Connecticut,  and  that  the  American  form 
of  commonwealth  originated  here,  and  not  in  Mas- 
sachusetts, Virginia,  or  any  other  colony,  might 
well  stop.  The  case  in  favor  of  Hooker,  however, 
has  now  an  impregnable  basis,  which  was  wanting 
when  the  standard  histories  of  the  commonwealth 
were  written.  His  letter  to  Winthrop  might  be 
made  the  foundation  of  the  claim  that  he  had  sup- 
plied the  spirit  of  the  Connecticut  constitution  ; 
and  yet  the  basis  is  an  unsatisfactory  one.  It  is 
evident  enough  that  the  complete  popular  control 
over  government  which  was  the  characteristic  of 
the  new  Connecticut  system  was  neither  familiar 
nor  welcome  at  the  time  in  the  other  Puritan  com- 
monwealth ;  but  the  letter  alone  is  not  enough  to 
establish  a  connection  of  this  fact  with  Hooker. 
All  this  time  there  has  been  in  existence  an  abstract 
of  a  sermon  of  Hooker's,  preached  at  Hartford, 
May  31,  1638,  some  seven  months  before  the 
framing  of  the  constitution.  Henry  Wolcott,  Jr., 
of  Windsor,  had  been  in  the  excellent  Puritan 
habit  of  taking  notes  of  the  sermons  to  which  he 
listened,  and  he  had  left  behind  him  a  MS.  volume 
of  abstracts  of  Hooker's  sermons.  Among  them 
was  this  sermon.  Dr.  J.  H.  Trumbull  saw  its  im- 
portance and  deciphered  its  short-hand  characters. 
Any  one  who  will  read  this  abstract,  and  try  to 
imagine  the  way  in  which  the  writer  of  the  letter 
to  Winthrop  must  have  clothed  this  skeleton  with 
flesh  and  blood,  and  the  effect  on  his  hearers,  will 


72  CONNECTICUT. 

appreciate  its  importance  in  American  history.  If 
the  germ  is  potentially  the  whole  development, 
this  is  the  most  important  profession  of  political 
faith  in  our  history.     It  is  as  follows  :  — 

Detjt.  i.  13.  —  Take  yau  wise  men,  and  understand- 
ing, and  known  among  your  tribes,  and  I  will  make  them 
rulers  over  you.  Captains  over  thousands,  and  captains 
over  hundreds,  over  fifties,  over  tens,  etc. 

Doctrine.  I.  That  the  choice  of  public  magistrates 
belongs  unto  the  people,  by  God's  own  allowance. 

II.  The  privilege  of  election,  which  belongs  to  the 
people,  therefore  must  not  be  exercised  according  to 
their  humours,  but  according  to  the  blessed  will  and  law 
of  God. 

III.  They  who  have  power  to  appoint  officers  and 
magistrates,  it  is  in  their  power,  also,  to  set  the  bounds 
and  limitations  of  the  power  and  place  unto  which  they 
call  them. 

Reasons.  1.  Because  the  foundation  of  authority  is 
laid,  firstly,  in  the  free  consent  of  the  people. 

2.  Because,  by  a  free  choice,  the  hearts  of  the  people 
will  be  more  inclined  to  the  love  of  the  persons  chosen 
and  more  ready  to  yield  obedience. 

3.  Because  of  that  duty  and  engagement  of  the  people. 
Uses.     The  lesson  taught  is  three-fold  :  — 

1st.  There  is  matter  of  thankful  acknowledgment  in 
the  appreciation  of  God's  faithfulness  towards  us,  and 
the  permission  of  these  measures  that  God  doth  command 
and  vouchsafe. 

2dly.  Of  reproof  —  to  dash  the  councils  of  all  those 
that  shall  oppose  it. 


THE  CONNECTICUT  COLONY.  73 

3dly.  Of  exhortation  —  to  persuade  us,  as  God  hath 
given  us  liberty,  to  take  it. 

And,  lastly,  as  God  hath  spared  our  lives,  and  given 
us  them  in  liberty,  so  to  seek  the  guidance  of  God,  and 
to  choose  in  God  and  for  God. 

Here  is  the  first  practical  assertion  of  the  right 
of  the  people  not  only  to  choose  but  to  limit  the 
powers  of  their  rulers,  an  assertion  which  lies  at 
the  foundation  of  the  American  system.  There  is 
no  reference  to  a  "dread  sovereign,"  no  resei'va- 
tion  of  deference  due  to  any  class,  not  even  to  the 
class  to  which  the  speaker  himself  belonged.  Each 
individual  was  to  exercise  his  rights  "  according 
to  the  blessed  will  and  law  of  God,"  but  he  was  to 
be  responsible  to  God  alone  for  his  fulfillment  of 
the  obligation.  The  whole  contains  the  germ  of 
the  idea  of  the  commonwealth,  and  it  was  devel- 
oped by  his  hearers  into  the  constitution  of  1639. 
It  is  on  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut,  under  the 
mighty  preaching  of  Thomas  Hooker  and  in  the 
constitution  to  which  he  gave  life,  if  not  form, 
that  we  draw  the  first  breath  of  that  atmosphere 
which  is  now  so  familiar  to  us.  The  birthplace  of 
American  democracy  is  Hartford. 

From  early  times,  certainly  since  1656,  Con- 
necticut has  placed  upon  her  common  seal  vines, 
to  represent  her  towns,  at  first  three  for  the  origi- 
nal towns  ;  then  one  for  each  town  ;  then,  as  the 
towns  became  more  numerous,  the  original  three 
again.     The   stripes  on   the  flag  of    the  United 


74  CONNECTICUT. 

States,  increased  to  fifteen  until  after  the  war  of 
1812,  are  a  curious  parallel.  With  the  vines  was 
the  significant  motto  of  the  commonwealth,  at 
first  on  a  scroll  held  by  a  hand  coming  out  of  a 
cloud,  afterwards  on  a  scroll  below  the  vines :  qui 
TRANSTULIT  SUSTINET.  The  motto  was  not 
meant  as  the  record  of  an  historical  fact  alone, 
or  as  an  exclusion  of  the  agency  of  man  from  the 
attainment  of  liberty.  The  spirit,  if  not  the  trans- 
lation, of  it  is  in  the  third  of  Hooker's  "  Uses  "  of 
his  lesson,  his  "  exhortation  —  to  persuade  us,  as 
God  hath  given  us  liberty,  to  take  it."  This  hia 
flock  proceeded  to  do  in  their  constitution. 

In  the  preamble,  the  inhabitants  and  residents 
of  Windsor,  Hartford,  and  Wethersfield,  desiring 
to  establish  an  orderly  and  decent  government 
according  to  God," associated  and  conjoined  them- 
selves to  be  as  one  public  state  or  commonwealth, 
for  the  purposes  of  maintaining  and  preserving  the 
liberty  and  purity  of  the  gospel,  the  discipline  of 
the  churches,  and  the  orderly  conduct  of  civil 
affairs  according  to  law.  There  is  no  mention  or 
hint  of  royal,  parliamentary,  or  proprietary  author- 
ity in  any  part  of  the  constitution,  or  in  the  forms 
of  oaths  for  governor,  magistrates,  and  constables 
which  make  an  appendix  to  it.  The  ecclesiastical 
excrescence  upon  it,  probably  inevitable  at  the 
time,  but  absolutely  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the 
whole  instrument,  was  to  remain  and  trouble  the 
commonwealth  until  the  political  system  came 
fully  up  to  its  own  original  standard  in  1818. 


TEE   CONNECTICUT  COLONY.  75 

The  constitution  gave  the  general  court  power 
to  "  admit  of  freemen  ;  "  but  the  right  of  suffrage 
was  given  unequivocally,  by  a  subsequent  addition 
to  the  first  section,  to  admitted  freemen  who  had 
taken  the  oath  of  fidelity  to  the  commonwealth  ; 
and  in  1643,  to  settle  the  matter,  the  court  declared 
that  it  understood  by  "  admitted  inhabitants " 
those  who  had  been  admitted  by  a  town.  The 
towns,  therefore,  retained  complete  political  con- 
trol of  their  own  affairs.  No  attempt  was  made 
to  define  the  powers  of  the  towns,  for  the  reason 
that  they,  being  preexistent  and  theoretically  in- 
dependent bodies,  had  all  powers  not  granted  to 
the  commonwealth.  To  avoid  any  possible  ques- 
tion, the  general  court,  at  its  meeting  in  the  follow- 
ing October,  passed  a  series  of  orders,  securing  to 
the  towns  the  powers  of  selling  their  lands ;  of 
choosing  their  own  officers ;  of  passing  local  laws 
■with  penalties  ;  of  assessing,  taxing,  and  distrain- 
ing for  nonpayment ;  of  choosing  a  local  court  of 
three,  five,  or  seven  persons,  with  power  to  hear 
and  determine  causes  arising  between  inhabitants 
of  the  town,  and  involving  not  more  than  forty 
shillings ;  of  recording  titles,  bonds,  sales  and 
mortgages  of  lands  within  the  town  ;  and  of  man- 
aging all  probate  business  arising  within  the  town. 
The  really  new  point  introduced  by  the  "  orders  " 
was  the  direction  to  the  towns  to  choose  certain 
of  their  chief  inhabitants,  not  exceeding  seven,  to 
act  as  magistrates.     Out  of  this  grew  rapidly  the 


76  CONNECTICUT. 

executive  board  of  the  towns  known  as  "  select- 
men," who  have  ever  since  held  almost  a  dictator- 
ship in  their  towns  during  the  intervals  between 
meetings  of  their  towns,  limited  by  the  force  of 
public  opinion,  by  commonwealth  statutes,  and  by 
personal  responsibility.  These  orders  are  often 
called  an  "  incorporation  "  of  the  towns  by  the 
general  court.  The  word  can  hardly  be  defended. 
All  these  privileges  belonged  to  the  towns  already  ; 
and  the  orders  of  October  10,  1639,  are  much  more 
like  the  first  ten  amendments  to  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States,  a  Bill  of  Rights,  originating 
in  the  jealousy  of  the  political  units.  Indeed, 
there  is  hardly  a  step  in  the  proceedings  in  Con- 
necticut in  1639  which  does  not  tempt  one  to  di- 
gress into  the  evident  parallels  in  the  action  on  the 
national  stage  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  later. 
Like  causes  produced  curiously  similar  effects. 

Each  town  was  to  choose  annually,  by  vote  of 
the  freemen,  four  persons  as  deputies  to  the  gen- 
eral court,  unless  the  number  of  towns  should  in- 
crease so  as  to  make  a  reduction  necessary.  Each 
year  there  was  to  be  a  court  of  election  on  the 
second  Thursday  of  April  (afterwards  changed  to 
May),  to  choose  a  governor  and  six  magistrates. 
The  choice  of  magistrates  was  limited  to  those 
nominated  at  some  preceding  session  of  the  court, 
each  town  making  not  more  than  two  nominations, 
and  the  general  court  adding  as  many  as  it  chose. 
At  the  court  of  election,  the  freemen  brought  in 


THE   CONNECTICUT   COLONY.  77 

paper  ballots  stating  their  choice  for  governor  for 
the  following  year,  a  plurality  vote  electing.  It 
seems  to  have  been  the  intention  to  make  this 
election  a  pure  democracy,  in  which  each  voter 
gave  in  his  ballot  in  person.  As  population  spread 
further  from  Hartford,  the  custom  of  sending  bal- 
lots by  proxies  must  have  grown  up  ;  for  the  court 
order  of  1660,  which  proposed  a  change  in  the 
governor's  term  of  office,  suggested  to  the  "remote 
Plantations,  that  use  to  send  Proxies  at  the  elec- 
tion, by  their  Deputies,"  that  they  should  vote  on 
their  ballots  for  or  against  the  proposed  repeal. 
After  1670,  the  regulations  adopted  by  the  assem- 
bly, to  govern  the  manner  of  taking  these  proxies, 
amounted  practically  to  election  laws,  to  be  en- 
forced by  the  town  selectmen.  The  governor  was 
to  be  a  church-member,  and  originally  no  one  was 
to  be  chosen  to  the  office  two  years  in  succession. 
In  1660,  the  general  court,  desiring  to  retain  John 
Winthrop,  Jr.,  as  governor,  proposed  to  the  free- 
men to  abolish  the  restriction  of  reelection,  and 
the  freemen  did  so. 

The  six  magistrates  were  the  germ  of  the  fu- 
ture senate  of  the  commonwealth,  but  at  first  they 
can  hardly  be  considered  a  separate  chamber. 
Their  "  magestraticall  powers  V  were  quite  unde- 
fined, and,  until  the  charter,  may  be  taken  to 
cover  not  only  judicial  functions,  but  such  duties 
as  the  general  court  saw  fit  to  add  thereto  from 
time   to   time.      In   general,    they   were   district 


78  CONNECTICUT. 

judges,  meeting  from  time  to  time  in  bank,  with 
legislative  powers  when  joined  by  the  governor 
and  deputies.  At  the  court  of  election,  the  sec- 
retary for  the  time  being  read  the  nominations 
for  the  ofl&ce  of  magistrate  in  the  order  in  which 
they  had  been  given  him.  As  each  was  read,  the 
freemen  handed  in  either  blank  ballots  counting 
against  the  candidate,  or  ballots  containing  his 
name  and  counting  for  him.  The  balloting  con- 
tinued until  six  names  had  obtained  a  majority  of 
the  votes  cast.  If  six  magistrates  were  not  thus 
obtained,  the  number  was  filled  up  by  taking  those 
names  which  had  received  the  largest  number  of 
votes  in  their  favor. 

On  the  second  Thursday  of  September,  the  gov- 
ernor, magistrates,  and  deputies  were  to  meet  as 
a  general  court,  "  for  makeing  of  lawes,"  other- 
wise expressed  by  the  phrase  "  to  agitate  the  af- 
faires of  the  commonwealth."  This  body  was  to 
pass  laws  of  general  interest,  to  dispose  of  unap- 
propriated lands,  to  act  as  a  court  of  last  resort, 
to  decide  on  the  amount  of  taxation,  and  to  appor- 
tion it  among  the  towns  on  the  report  of  an  ap- 
portionment committee  on  which  each  town  was 
to  be  equally  represented. 

In  the  little  to^n  republics,  the  ancient  and 
honorable  office  of  constable  was  the  connecting 
link  between  commonwealth  and  town.  The  con- 
stable published  the  commonwealth  laws  to  his 
town,  kept  the  "  publike  peace  "  of  the  town  and 


THE  CONNECTICUT  COLONY.  79 

commonwealth,  levied  the  town's  share  of  the 
commonwealth  taxation,  and  went  "  from  howse 
to  howse  "  to  notify  the  freemen  of  meetings  of 
the  general  court,  and  of  the  time  and  place  of 
elections  of  deputies  thereto.  "  The  parish,"  says 
Selden,  "  makes  the  constable ;  and,  when  the 
constable  is  made,  he  governs  the  parish."  He 
might  even  become  the  instrument  of  a  legal  rev- 
olution, in  case  the  governor  and  magistrates  re- 
fused to  call  the  regular  meetings  of  the  general 
court,  or,  on  petition  of  the  freemen,  a  special 
meeting.  In  that  case,  the  constitution  provided 
that  the  freemen  were  to  instruct  the  constables 
to  order  elections  of  deputies,  who  were  to  consti- 
tute a  general  court  themselves,  excluding  the 
governor  and  magistrates.  This  power  never  was 
exercised,  but  it  is  an  extraordinary  feature  in 
constitutional  law.  It  was  the  Connecticut  mode 
of  ensuring  recognition  of  the  direct  representa- 
tives of  the  towns. 

This  constitution  was  the  first  conscious  and 
deliberate  attempt  to  found  a  commonwealth  de- 
mocracy on  this  continent,  and  it  lasted  in  reality 
until  1818,  for  the  charter  changed  it  in  no  essen- 
tial point.  It  was  a  system  of  complete  popular 
control,  of  frequent  elections  by  the  people,  and 
of  minute  local  government.  It  remained,  through- 
out confiscations,  modifications,  and  refusals  of 
charters  in  other  colonies,  the  exemplar  of  the 
rights  of  self-government  which  all  the  English 


80  CONNECTICUT. 

colonies  gradually  came  to  aim  at  more  or  less 
consciously.  In  later  times  the  length  of  ser- 
vice of  its  oflBcers  was  again  and  again  cited  by 
Jefferson  to  prove  that,  in  a  real  democracy,  an- 
nual elections  were  no  bar  to  prolonged  tenure 
of  office.  The  first  election  of  officers  under  the 
constitution  was  held  April  11,  1639.  John 
Haynes  was  chosen  governor.  Six  magistrates 
were  elected.  One  of  the  magistrates,  Roger  Lud- 
low, was  chosen  deputy  governor ;  another,  Ed- 
ward Hopkins,  secretary ;  and  another,  Thomas 
Wells,  treasurer  ;  and  these  and  twelve  deputies, 
or  "  committees,"  made  up  the  general  court. 
Until  1660,  it  was  a  tolerably  steady  rule  that  the 
governor  of  one  year  was  the  deputy  governor  of 
the  next,  and  vice  versa.  In  this  period  of  about 
twenty  years  Haynes  was  governor  eight  times, 
and  deputy  governor  five  times ;  and  Hopkins  was 
governor  seven  times,  and  deputy  governor  six 
times.  In  1657  John  Winthrop  began  his  term 
of  service  as  governor,  which  lasted,  through  the 
removal  of  the  provision  against  reelection,  for 
eighteen  years,  the  longest  term  of  service  reached 
by  any  of  Connecticut's  chief  magistrates.  In  the 
next  century,  Gurdon  Saltonstall  held  the  office 
for  seventeen  years,  1707-24,  Nathan  Gold  hold- 
ing the  office  of  deputy  governor  during  all  but 
the  first  year  of  Saltonstall's  term.  Saltonstall 
was  followed  by  Joseph  Talcott,  who  also  held 
the  office  of  governor  for  seventeen  years,  1724- 


THE  CONNECTICUT   COLONY.  81 

41 ;  having  the  same  deputy  governor,  Jonathan 
Law,  throughout  his  entire  term.  Law  succeeded 
Talcott ;  and  thereafter,  until  1818,  the  rule  was 
that  a  governor  held  office  until  he  died  or  refused 
to  serve  longer,  when  the  deputy  governor  took 
his  place  for  a  like  term.  Jonathan  Trumbull, 
senior,  was  governor,  1769-84  ;  and  his  son,  of 
the  same  name,  held  the  office  1798-1809. 

Reelection  to  other  offices  was  never  prohibited, 
and  long  terms  of  service  in  them  have  been  al- 
most too  numerous  for  special  mention.  John  Al- 
lyn,  for  example,  became  secretary  in  1664  and 
held  the  office  for  twenty-eight  years,  influencing 
the  policy  of  the  colony  strongly  during  the  whole 
period.  A  more  remarkable  case  is  that  of  the 
Whitings,  who  held  the  office  of  treasurer  for 
seventy  years,  —  Joseph  Whiting  1679-1718,  and 
his  son  and  successor,  John  Whiting,  1718-49. 
Even  this  family  record  was  outdone  by  the 
Wyllyses  in  the  office  of  secretary.  Hezekiah 
Wyllys  held  the  office  1712-35  ;  his  son  and  suc- 
cessor, George  Wyllys,  1735-96;  and  Samuel 
Wyllys,  George's  son  and  successor,  1796-1810, 
the  office  having  remained  in  the  family  but  two 
years  short  of  a  century.  Length  of  tenure  was 
the  rule  in  local  offices  as  well.  In  the  first  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years  of  its  history,  Hartford 
has  had  but  twenty  town  clerks.  One  of  them, 
John  Allyn,  held  the  office,  by  annual  elections, 
for  thirty-seven  years,  and  another,  George  Wyllyg, 


82  CONNECTICUT. 

for  fifty  years.  Cases  of  this  kind  were  exceed- 
ingly common  throughout  the  commonwealth. 
William  Hillhouse,  of  New  London,  served  in  the 
general  court  for  fifty-eight  years,  so  that,  as  elec- 
tions to  the  lower  house  of  that  body  were  semi- 
annual, he  was  sent  by  his  town  to  one  hundred 
and  sixteen  successive  sessions. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  much  of  this  perma- 
nency in  democracy  was  due  to  the  nature  of  the 
people  ;  but  a  large  share  ought  to  be  credited  to 
their  institutions.  The  people,  fully  satisfied  with 
the  complete  control  over  the  government  which 
their  constitution  had  secured  to  them,  were  con- 
tent to  allow  circumstances  to  develop  the  men 
best  suited  to  government.  At  the  same  time, 
the  intense  personal  interest  felt  by  every  citizen 
in  the  commonwealth  gave  all  of  them  a  common 
motive,  sharpened  their  intelligence,  united  their 
force,  and  carried  the  commonwealth  safely 
through  storms  which  would  otherwise  have  been 
fatal.  So  much,  at  least,  Connecticut  owes  to  the 
constitution  of  1639. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
THE   NEW  HAVEN  COLONY. 

The  settlements  of  New  Haven,  Milford,  and 
Guilford  probably  had  their  origin  in  closely  con- 
nected movements  at  home,  though  they  took 
place  at  different  times.  Every  indication  to  be 
drawn  from  the  records  shows  common  character- 
istics of  persons,  methods,  beliefs,  and  purposes. 

The  two  most  prominent  men  in  the  New  Haven 
party  of  settlers  were  John  Davenport  (otherwise 
Damport  or  Dampard)  and  Theophilus  Eaton, 
both  Londoners,  at  least  by  adoption.  Davenport 
was  a  Coventry  man,  an  Oxford  student,  curate 
of  St.  Lawrence  Jewry,  and  vicar  of  St.  Stephen's, 
Coleman  Street,  London.  His  inclinations  seem 
to  have  been  at  first  those  of  a  moderately  Low 
Church  man,  in  the  modern  sense  ;  but  Laud's 
persecutions  had  converted  him  into  a  "  danger- 
ous "  Puritan  by  1633,  when  he  resigned  and  went 
to  Holland.  His  acquaintance  among  Londoners 
of  the  middle  class  and  of  his  own  way  of  think- 
ing was  extensive  ;  and  it  was  from  this  class  that 
the  material  strength  of  the  New  Haven  settle- 
ment was  drawn.     Its  leading  representative  was 


84  CONNECTICUT. 

Theophilus  Eaton,  an  Oxfordshire  man  by  birth, 
and  a  London  merchant  of  sufficient  prominence 
to  have  served  in  some  semi-diplomatic  capacity  at 
the  Danish  court.  In  some  way  now  unknown,  the 
tentacles  of  the  movement  had  run  out  into  York- 
shire, Hertfordshire,  and  Kent ;  and  these  counties 
furnished  the  bulk  of  the  purely  agricultural  pop- 
ulation. The  Hertfordshire  families  seem  to  have 
tended  to  Milford,  and  the  men  of  Kent  to  Guil- 
ford, while  the  Yorkshiremen  found  New  Haven 
most  congenial. 

The  first  or  New  Haven  party  of  settlers,  mainly 
Londoners,  with  Davenport  and  Eaton  as  leaders, 
landed  at  Boston,  July  26,  1637.  The  wealth, 
influence,  and  coherence  of  the  party  made  it  a 
desirable  acquisition,  and  the  Bay  colony  made 
every  effort  to  settle  it  within  the  jurisdiction. 
Many  reasons  combined  to  make  the  efforts  fruit- 
less. Theological  disputes,  notably  the  Hutchin- 
son controversy,  had  harassed  Massachusetts ;  and 
there  was  no  great  promise,  to  the  critical  eyes  of 
the  new-comers,  of  healing  them.  The  peculiar- 
ity of  Massachusetts,  as  distinguished  from  Con- 
necticut, was  the  supremacy  of  the  commonwealth 
over  the  towns,  of  church  -  members  over  non- 
church-membei's,  and  of  influential  classes  over 
the  church-members.  This  constitution  of  affairs 
was  not  so  objectionable  to  the  Davenport  and 
Eaton  party,  for  they  followed  it  closely  in  their 
own  colony,  as   the  fact  that   in  Massachusetts 


THE  NEW  HAVEN  COLONY.  85 

they  would  form  only  one  or  two  towns,  and 
would  be  under  the  control  of  the  commonwealth, 
whereas  they  desired  to  he  the  commonwealth  and 
control  the  subordinate  civil  divisions.  They  had 
no  desire  to  assume  the  place  of  the  common- 
wealth's opposition,  from  which  the  Connecticut 
settlers  had  just  escaped.  Again,  they  came  to 
Boston  at  a  time  when  the  newly  opened  Connec- 
ticut territory  was  a  common  topic  of  conversa- 
tion ;  and  a  "  fine  opening  "  has  always  been  an 
almost  irresistible  temptation  to  the  race.  Fi- 
nally, the  chase  of  the  Pequots  along  the  Connec- 
ticut coast  toward  New  Netherland  had  taken 
place  within  a  month  of  their  arrival ;  and  who 
could  pass  through  the  southern  borders  of  Con- 
necticut in  June  without  sounding  their  praises  to 
his  friends  at  Hartford  and  the  Bay  ?  The  new- 
comers seem  to  have  decided  very  quickly  that 
they  would  not  remain  in  Massachusetts ;  that 
they  would  go  to  the  new  territory  ;  and  that 
their  settlement  should  be  placed  somewhere  on 
the  coast. 

In  the  autumn  of  1637,  Eaton,  with  some  of  his 
party,  explored  the  northern  shore  of  Long  Island 
Sound,  and  pitched  on  Quinnipiack,  an  Indian 
district  having  a  good  harbor,  as  the  best  seat  for 
a  colony.  A  hut  was  built,  and  a  few  men  were 
left  to  try  the  winter  climate  by  personal  experi- 
ence. The  rest  of  the  party  remained  in  various 
Massachusetts   towns,   and   even   increased   their 


86  CONNECTICUT. 

numbers  by  accessions  from  their  neighbors.  The 
venture  had  a  commercial  as  well  as  a  politico- 
religious  aspect.  Each  of  the  "  free  planters " 
had  invested  stocks,  varying  from  Eaton's  X  3,000 
down  to  the  ordinary  <£10  share.  Some  of  these 
"  free  planters "  never  came  to  New  Haven  or 
New  England,  investing  money  only  ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  some  Massachusetts  men  entered  their 
names,  and  even  promised  their  personal  presence 
to  the  venture. 

The  company  set  sail  froni  Boston  March  30, 
1638.  Quinnipiack  was  reached  in  about  a  fort- 
night; and  the  memorable  first  sermon  was 
preached  by  Davenport,  April  18,  under  an  oak- 
tree,  probably  from  Matt.  iv.  1  :  "  Then  was  Jesus 
led  up  of  the  Spirit  into  the  wilderness  to  be 
tempted  of  the  Devil."  It  is  a  pity  that  no  note 
of  the  discourse  has  been  preserved,  for  the  obvious 
application  of  the  text  to  the  situation  of  the  hear- 
ers, the  constant  temptation  to  consider  every  un- 
pleasant incident,  or  even  the  consequences  of  their 
own  errors,  as  the  intervention  of  their  personal 
enemy  and  antagonist,  the  Devil,  would  go  very 
far  to  explain  or  palliate  many  otherwise  inex- 
plicable events  in  their  history. 

Such  incidents  were  not  slow  in  coming.  The 
season  was  so  bad  that  the  crops  failed  and  had  to 
be  replanted  ;  and  a  violent  earthquake,  June  1, 
seemed  sent  to  daunt  their  spirits  and  drive  them 
out  of  the  territory  into  which  they  had  intruded. 


THE  NEW  HAVEN  COLONY.  87 

If  any  of  these  things  moved  them,  it  was  probably 
only  to  a  more  stubborn  resolution  against  Satanic 
power  and  Indian  powowings.  Their  determina- 
tion to  stand  their  ground  was  not  relaxed.  On 
the  contrary,  and  as  if  to  deal  fairly  even  with 
their  spiritual  enemies,  they  went  on  to  complete 
their  title  to  the  soil  by  purchase  from  the  Indians. 
On  November  24  and  December  11,  1638,  Daven- 
port, Eaton,  "and  others"  bought  the  title  from 
Momaugin  and  Montowese  respectively,  with  their 
subordinate  chiefs.  Subsequent  neighboring  pur- 
chases made  up,  roughly  speaking,  the  present 
county  of  New  Haven,  excluding  the  narrow  strip 
on  its  northern  border.  For  all  this  the  price  paid 
was  one  dozen  each  of  coats,  spoons,  hatchets,  hoes 
and  porringers,  two  dozen  knives,  and  four  cases  of 
French  knives  and  "  sizers  "  to  one,  and  a  dozen 
coats  to  the  other,  with  a  vague  promise  to  both  of 
protection  against  their  enemies,  and  a  reservation 
of  the  Indian  right  to  hunt  and  fish  on  the  ceded 
territory.  Some  may  think  that  this  was  driving 
a  sharp  bargain  with  the  adversary;  but,  all  things 
considered,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  Indians 
received  all  that  the  territory  was  worth  to  them. 
The  colony  purchases  did  not  stop  here :  pur- 
chase was  the  colony's  consistent  policy.  The  In- 
dian district  of  Wapoweage  (subsequently  Milford) 
was  bought  February  12, 1638  (9) ;  Menunkatuck 
(Guilford),  September  29,  1639 ;  Rippowams 
(Stamford),  in  July,  1640 ;  and  Yennicock  (South- 


88  CONNECTICUT. 

old,  L.  I.),  some  time  in  1640.  These  four  plan- 
tations, subsequently  developed  into  towns,  with 
Branford,  made  up  mainly  of  the  purchase  of  De- 
cember 11, 1638,  and  the  parent  settlement  of  New- 
Haven,  finally  constituted  the  New  Haven  com- 
monwealth. 

New  parties  entered  the  colony  from  England 
throughout  the  autumn  and  winter  of  1638-39,  so 
that  there  were  thi*ee  ministers  present  —  Daven- 
port, Rev.  Henry  Whitefield,  and  Rev.  Peter  Prud- 
den,  with  congregations  more  or  less  organized  ; 
and  another,  Rev.  Samuel  Eaton,  a  brother  of 
Theophilus,  who  seems  to  have  had  no  following. 
Homogeneous  as  this  settlement  was,  there  were 
evidently  interests  which  would  impel  segregation, 
and  it  was  decided  that  the  Whitefield  party 
should  take  Guilford,  the  Prudden  party  Milford, 
and  Samuel  Eaton  Branford,  if  he  could  obtain 
settlers.  The  latter  enterprise  was  a  failure,  and 
Eaton  was  a  resident  of  New  Haven  for  four  years 
after  1640,  then  returning  to  England  and  dying 
there  in  1664.  The  Milford  and  Guilford  ventures 
were  successful  during  the  summer ;  and  they 
were  from  the  beginning  so  definite  in  organiza- 
tion that,  though  they  were  in  New  Haven  in  June, 
and  afterwards  followed  the  ecclesiastical  and 
civil  constitution  then  adopted,  they  did  not  in- 
trude upon  the  proceedings  which  led  to  it. 

More  is  known  of  the  early  topography  and 
appearance   of   New    Haven   than    of    Hartford. 


THE  NEW  HAVEN  COLONY.  89 

Atwater  and  Lambert  give  maps  of  early  New 
Haven  and  Milford.  The  houses  of  the  early- 
leaders,  at  least,  are  pretty  accurately  described, 
and  something  is  known  of  their  interiors.  Con- 
temporaries were  struck  with  the  unaccustomed 
luxury  of  the  New  Haven  houses.  Some  of  them 
had  tapestry  hangings  ;  and  Governor  Eaton's  had 
Turkey  carpets,  tapestry  carpets  and  rugs.  It  is 
certain,  at  any  rate,  that  the  colony  was  spared 
many  of  the  privations  incident  to  most  of  the 
New  England  settlements  ;  and  that,  until  the 
unhappy  issue  of  the  Delaware  Bay  settlement, 
which  brought  poverty  into  the  colony,  its  affairs 
were  unusually  prosperous. 

Soon  after  their  arrival  at  Quinnipiack,  the 
Davenport  and  Eaton  party  had  framed  what  was 
called  a  "  plantation  covenant."  Nothing  is  known 
of  its  terms,  except  that  it  was  short  and  simple, 
mei'ely  engaging  that  the  Scriptures  should  govern 
their  proceedings  not  only  in  the  gathering  and 
ordering  of  the  church,  but  in  the  choice  of  magis- 
trates and  other  officers,  the  making  and  repeal  of 
laws,  the  allotment  of  inheritances,  and  all  other 
civil  affairs.  This,  to  be  sure,  furnished  the  lines 
on  which  the  future  constitution  was  to  be  con- 
structed. It  had,  also,  peculiar  effects  which  de- 
serve notice,  though  they  may  not  be  apparent  on 
the  surface.  It  practically  abolished  the  excres- 
cences, such  as  entails  and  primogeniture,  which 
had  grown  up  on  the  English  common  law  ;   it 


90  CONNECTICUT. 

was  almost,  if  not  quite,  a  declaration  of  indepen- 
dence :  and  it  made  it  certain  that  nothing  short 
of  direct  and  overmastering  force  could  make  the 
commonwealth  anything  but  a  republic.  But  it 
was  yet  without  form  or  consistence ;  and  in  spite 
of  its  Scripture  provisions,  the  real  work  of  consti- 
tution-making by  the  settlers  did  not  begin  until 

"  They  in  Newman's  barn  laid  down 
Scripture  foundations  for  the  town." 

The  planters  met  June  4,  1639,  in  a  large  barn 
belonging  to  Mr.  Robert  Newman,  to  settle  a  con-^ 
stitution.  Rev.  Mr.  Davenport  opened  the  matter 
by  preaching  from  Prov.  ix.  1 :  "  Wisdom  hath 
builded  her  house  ;  she  hath  hewn  out  her  seven 
pillars."  The  application  of  the  text  to  the  busi- 
ness in  hand  was  that,  in  a  wise  ordering  of  church 
or  state,  it  was  essential  to  rest  on  seven  approved 
brethren,  to  whom  the  others  were  to  be  added. 
It  is  not  difficult  to  see,  on  a  general  survey  of  the 
whole  proceeding,  what  was  the  underlying  pur- 
port of  this  proposition  ;  for,  if  the  constitution  of 
Connecticut  looked  of  necessity  to  a  government 
by  the  many,  that  of  New  Haven  had  as  strong  a 
disposition  to  secure  government  by  the  chosen 
few. 

After  the  service,  Mr.  Davenport  submitted  six 
"  foundamentall  orders "  to  the  planters  before 
him ;  and  as  eacn  was  adopted  by  a  show  of 
hands,  the  whole  became  the  constitution  of  New 
Haven.     The  orders  were  as  follows  :  — 


THE  NEW  HAVEN  COLONY.  91 

1.  That  the  Scriptures  hold  forth  a  perfect  rule 
for  men  in  their  family,  church  and  commonwealth 
affairs. 

2.  That  the  rules  of  Scripture  were  to  govern 
the  gathering  and  ordering  of  the  church,  the 
choice  of  magistrates  and  officers,  the  making  and 
repeal  of  laws,  the  dividing  of  allotments  of  inher- 
itance, and  all  things  of  like  nature. 

3.  That  all  "  free  planters  "  were  to  become  such 
with  the  resolution  and  intention  to  be  admitted 
into  church  fellowship  as  soon  as  God  should  fit 
them  thereunto. 

4.  That  civil  order  was  to  be  such  as  should  con- 
duce to  securing  the  purity  and  peace  of  the  ordi- 
nances to  the  free  planters  and  their  posterity. 

5.  That  church-members  only  were  to  be  "  free 
burgesses,"  and  were  to  choose  from  their  own 
number  magistrates  and  officers  to  make  laws,  di- 
vide inheritances,  decide  cases  at  law,  and  transact 
all  public  business.  This  alone  seems  to  have  met 
opposition.  It  called  upon  those  free  planters  who 
were  not  church-members  to  surrender  political  as 
well  as  ecclesiastical  power  into  the  hands  of  the 
comparative  minority  who  were  church-members, 
and  to  make  the  surrender  permanent  and  funda- 
mental. One  man,  probably  Rev.  Samuel  Eaton, 
agreed  to  the  general  principle  that  voters  and 
magistrates  should  be  men  fearing  God,  and  that 
the  church  was  the  likeliest  place  to  find  such ; 
"  only  at  this  he  stuck,  that  free  planters  ought 


92  CONNECTICUT. 

not  to  give  this  power  out  of  their  hands."  The 
vote  left  the  objector  in  a  minority  of  one.  The 
number  thus  disfranchised  in  New  Haven  was 
probably  a  majority  ;  in  Guilford,  nearly  half  ;  in 
Milford,  but  ten  out  of  forty -four,  and  six  of  these 
■were  admitted  within  a  year  or  two. 

6.  That  the  free  burgesses,  or  church-members, 
were  to  choose  twelve  of  their  number,  and  that 
these  twelve  were  to  choose  the  "  seven  pillars  " 
to  begin  the  church.  The  twelve  selected  were 
Eaton,  Davenport,  Robert  Newman,  Matthew  Gil- 
bert, Richard  Malbon,  Nathaniel  Turner,  Ezekiel 
Cheevers,  Thomas  Fugill,  John  Ponderson,  Wil- 
liam Andrews  and  Jeremiah  Dixon,  all  noted 
names  in  early  New  Haven  history.  The  names 
given  number  but  eleven.  The  reason  for  the  de- 
ficiency is  unknown.  It  may  perhaps  be  found  in 
a  note  on  the  record  that  one  of  the  twelve  was 
accused  of  extortion,  confessed  it  with  grief,  and 
made  restitution.  His  name  may  have  been  left 
out  and  never  supplied. 

A  provision  was  added  to  the  "  foundamentalls" 
that  no  one  be  admitted  as  a  free  planter  until  he 
had  signed  them.  This  was  to  make  the  peculiar- 
ities of  the  constitution  permanent. 

Eaton,  Davenport,  Newman,  Gilbert,  Fugill, 
Ponderson  and  Dixon  were  chosen  as  the  "  seven 
pillars."  These  then  entered  into  covenant  with 
one  another  (August  22),  this  step  constituting 
the  church,  and  proceeded  to  gather  the  other 


TEE  NEW  HAVEN  COLONY.  93 

brethren  to  them  and  it.  They  were  thus  a  church 
before  they  were  a  civil  government,  and  the  or- 
ganized church  organized  the  government.  On  the 
same  day  the  church  at  Milford  was  gathered  in 
the  same  way. 

The  seven  pillars  met  for  the  first  time  as  a 
general  court  October  16,  1639.  They  elected 
Eaton  "  magistrate :  "  he  was  not  called  governor 
until  the  full  development  of  the  commonwealth 
in  1643.  Newman,  Gilbert,  Turner  and  Fugill 
were  chosen  deputy  magistrates,  and  Fugill  secre- 
tary and  notary  public.  It  was  agreed  that  future 
elections  should  be  held  in  the  last  week  of  Octo- 
ber yearly,  and  that  the  word  of  God  should  be 
the  only  rule  for  the  guidance  of  judges  and  public 
officers.  Popular  control,  carefully  limited  as  to 
the  general  court,  was  as  nearly  as  possible  ex- 
cluded from  the  periodical  meetings  of  the  magis- 
trates' court  held  by  Eaton  and  his  four  deputies. 
Even  after  1643,  when  it  became  the  Particular 
Court  of  New  Haven,  it  was  rather  a  court  of  both 
civil  and  criminal  equity  than  anything  else. 

The  republic  of  New  Haven,  thus  constituted, 
had  very  little  official  communication  with  depend- 
ent or  associated  towns  for  some  four  years.  Mil- 
ford  with  forty-four  free  planters,  and  Guilford 
with  forty,  were  settled  in  1639,  in  November  and 
August  respectively,  under  governments  carefully 
modelled  on  that  of  New  Haven.  Most  of  the 
Milford    settlers  were     dissatisfied    Wethersfield 


94  CONNECTICUT. 

people,  who  had  left  the  Connecticut  jurisdiction 
to  reach  just  such  a  social  and  ecclesiastical  system 
as  that  of  New  Haven  ;  while  the  Guilford  people 
were  absolutely  in  sympathy  with  Davenport  even 
before  their  departure  from  England.  Each  had 
its  church,  gathered  to  its  seven  pillars,  who  also 
acted  as  a  legislature  and  court,  and  held  the  town 
lands  in  trust  for  the  town.  The  separate  life  of 
New  Haven  may  therefore  stand  as  a  fair  repre- 
sentative of  the  others. 

The  lands  belonging  to  the  towns  seem  to  have 
been  distributed  by  common  agreement  or  by  lot, 
and  with  entire  impartiality.  The  minister  was 
given  a  first  choice ;  and  it  was  very  natural  that 
a  man  so  distinguished  among  his  fellows  as  Eaton 
was  honored  with  a  choice  next  after  the  minister. 
The  leading  military  man.  Captain  Turner,  and 
the  deacons,  were  given  a  similar  privilege,  so  that 
they  might  choose  places  convenient  for  the  ful- 
fillment of  their  duties.  Thereafter  the  division 
bears  a  curious  resemblance  to  the  distribution  of 
lands  under  the  village  community  system.  The 
limited  area  which  was  meant  to  be  the  real  town 
was  divided  into  home  lots,  and  the  outlying  lands 
of  the  township,  as  distinguished  from  the  town, 
were  divided  into  corresponding  plots  of  arable 
and  meadow  lands.  Home  lots  and  outlying  plots 
were  of  different  sizes,  corresponding  to  the  vari- 
ous known  gradations  of  contribution  to  the  com- 
mon stock.     In  each  grade  of  contribution,  the 


THE  NEW  HAVEN  COLONY.  95 

contributors  received  share  and  share  alike,  though 
the  higher  grades  of  contributors  had  to  be  first 
satisfied.  But  "  grades  of  contribution  "  did  not 
depend  simply  on  money  values.  In  the  distribu- 
tion of  January,  1640,  each  settler  received  five 
acres  of  upland  and  meadow  for  each  hundred 
pounds  of  his  estate,  and  for  each  head  in  his 
family  two  and  a  half  acres  of  upland  and  half  an 
acre  of  meadow ;  "  and  in  the  necke  an  acre  to 
every  hundred  pound,  and  half  an  acre  to  every 
head."  In  the  distribution  of  September,  1640, 
twenty  acres  of  out-land  were  assigned  to  every 
"  hundred  pounds  of  estate  given  in,"  and  two  and 
a  half  acres  for  "  every  head  ;  "  and  it  was  decided 
that  each  of  the  small  lots  in  the  town  should  have 
four  acres  of  planting  ground  to  each  lot,  and  one 
acre  to  every  head.  As  a  restriction  on  the  eager- 
ness for  acquisition,  taxes  were  imposed  from  the 
beginning, —  fourpence  an  acre  per  annum  for  up- 
land and  meadow,  and  twopence  for  second-division 
lands.  Finally,  no  sales  to  outsiders  were  to  be 
made  without  the  approval  of  the  general  court ; 
and  common  lands,  including  clay-pits,  were  re- 
served to  the  commonwealth. 

These  "  common  lands  "  were  held  under  much 
the  same  conditions  in  the  New  Haven  and  Con- 
necticut  towns  as  in  those  of  Massachusetts,  though 
the  materials  for  study  are  not  so  abundant. 
There  was  no  hasty  scramble  from  ship  to  shore, 
no  location  wherever  choice  and  opportunity  might 


96  CONNECTICUT. 

lead  a  family  to  settle  without  interfering  Tvitli 
prior  rights.  On  the  contrary,  every  step  was  or- 
dered and  directed  by  the  voice  of  the  town,  ex- 
pressed in  that  assembly  which  has  always  been 
the  mainspring  of  the  New  England  system.  The 
voice  of  the  town  either  chose  each  man's  location 
for  him,  or  fixed  the  principles  on  which  it  was  to 
be  chosen.  Here  the  parallel  with  any  form  of 
the  village  community  must  stop,  for  the  New 
England  settlers  had  come  from  England  thor- 
oughly imbued  with  the  idea  of  individual  prop- 
erty in  land;  and  the  land,  when  once  allotted, 
became  purely  individual  property,  subject  to 
alienation  or  devise,  without  return  to  the  com- 
mon stock.  But  there  was  necessarily  a  certain 
amount  of  land,  larger  or  smaller,  which  was  not 
needed  for  immediate  allotment ;  and  the  rules  of 
the  community  were  pretty  rigidly  applied  to  this. 
It  was  the  property  of  all,  and  was  at  first  regu- 
lated by  the  town  authorities.  In  New  Haven, 
January  16,  1642  (3),  it  was  decided  that  the 
common  land  known  as  "  The  Neck  "  should  be  a 
"  stinted  common  "  for  cattle,  and  should  be 
fenced  and  fitted  with  gates.  The  owner  of 
twelve  acres  could  put  in  a  horse,  of  six  acres  an 
ox,  of  three  acres  a  two-year-old  steer,  and  of 
two  acres  a  calf.  As  allotments  had  not  depended 
on  wealth  alone,  but  on  "  heads  "  as  well,  this  gave 
every  man  a  share  in  the  common.  So  a  Norwalk 
town  meeting  of  May  30,  1655,  voted  that  "  all 


THE  NEW  HAVEN   COLONY.  97 

dry  cattle,  excepting  two  year  old  heifers,  shall 
be  herded  together  on  the  other  side  of  the  Nor- 
walk  river,  and  there  kept  by  the  owners  of  the 
cattle ;  every  man  keeping  according  to  his  pro- 
portion of  the  cattle  there  herded."  And  all  the 
town  records  of  early  years  contain  provisions  al- 
lowing the  inhabitants  to  fell  timber  in  the  town 
"  commonage  "  at  particular  seasons,  or  to  carry 
away  windfalls. 

As  long  as  the  town  commonage  was  large  and 
comparatively  valueless,  its  affairs  were  managed 
by  the  town  meeting.  As  its  area  became  smaller 
and  more  valuable,  and  as  new-comers  crowded  into 
the  town,  the  management  fell  into  the  hands  of 
an  association  of  proprietors,  composed  of  descend- 
ants of  the  original  settlers,  and  interminable  law- 
suits often  varied  the  monotony  of  the  management. 
All  through  the  eighteenth  century,  the  efforts  of 
the  "  new-comers  "  to  get  a  share  of  the  common 
lands  made  up  a  large  part  of  local  politics  ;  and, 
during  the  Revolution  period,  the  same  question 
underlies  much  of  the  difference  between  "  Sons 
of  Liberty  "  and  "  Tories."  Finally,  the  com- 
monage being  reduced  by  sales  to  a  minimum  of 
land  poor  enough  to  bankrupt  any  corporation 
which  should  undertake  to  manage  it  in  earnest, 
the  association  of  proprietors  dies  out  and  disap- 
pears, or  becomes  an  hereditary  social  organiza- 
tion. 

A  pronounced  distinction  between  New  Haven 


98  CONNECTICUT. 

and  Connecticut  was  the  inquisitorial  character 
assumed  by  the  former  from  the  beginning  of  its 
existence.  It  is  true  that  much  of  what  appears 
to  be  inquisitorial  proceeding  was  due  to  the  pe- 
culiar theory  which  governed  the  constitution  of 
the  legislative  bodies  of  New  England  :  the  legis- 
latures were  also  courts,  and  their  proceedings 
were  interspersed  with  a  vast  number  of  cases 
which  would  now  be  thought  beneath  the  atten- 
tion of  a  commonwealth  government,  —  cases  of 
lewdness,  drunkenness  in  servants,  impertinence, 
promiscuous  kissing,  etc.  But  the  difference, 
which  is  plainly  perceptible  from  any  reading  of 
the  respective  records,  is  that  such  matters  were 
rather  matters  of  business  with  the  Connecticut 
authorities,  to  be  dealt  with  and  got  rid  of  as  rap- 
idly as  justice  would  permit;  while  to  the  New 
Haven  magistracy  they  were  matters  of  deep  and 
serious  import,  to  be  probed  to  the  bottom  with 
scientij&c  accuracy  in  every  moral  and  psychologi- 
cal detail.  Every  New  Haven  sentence  bristles 
at  least  with  implications  of  the  moral  law. 
"Never  elsewhere,  I  believe,"  says  Dr.  Bacon, 
"  has  the  world  seen  magistrates  who  felt  more 
deeply  that  they  were  God's  ministers  executing 
God's  justice."  All  this  may  be  admitted  with- 
out impairing  the  belief  that  this  attempted  per- 
sonification of  Divine  justice  had  its  drawbacks. 
It  would  be  unjust  to  say,  as  is  generally  assumed, 
that  it  resulted  in  Draconic  severity  of  punish' 


THE  NEW  HAVEN   COLONY.  99 

incnt :  New  Haven  punishments,  as  a  rule,  were 
not  at  all  severe.  It  would  be  unfaithful  not  to 
say  that  it  resulted  in  a  meddlesomeness  which 
must  have  done  more  moral  harm  than  good,  and 
in  the  end  did  much  to  overthrow  the  government 
itself.  "  Goodman  Hunt  and  his  wife,  for  keep- 
ing the  councils  of  the  said  William  Harding,  bak- 
ing him  a  pasty  and  plum-cakes,  and  keeping  com- 
pany with  him  on  the  Lord's  day,  and  she  suffer- 
ing Harding  to  kiss  her,"  were  ordered  to  be  sent 
out  of  town  "  within  one  month  after  the  date 
hereof  [March  1,  1643],  yea,  in  a  shorter  time  if 
any  miscarriage  be  found  in  them."  While  the 
New  Haven  magistracy  was  sitting  in  solemn  la- 
bor to  bring  forth  such  a  mouse  as  this,  its  Con- 
necticut rival  was  actively  engaged  in  real  com- 
monwealth business,  every  step  of  which  made  its 
ultimate  supremacy  more  assured. 

The  peculiar  cast  of  mind  of  the  New  Haven 
magistracy  has  done  injustice  to  the  good  name  of 
the  early  town.  Its  records  of  trials  contain  a 
mass  of  filth  from  which  the  Connecticut  records 
are  comparatively  free.  Some  think  that  the 
missing  records,  covering  the  years  1649-53,  were 
even  worse,  and  were  destroyed  by  the  authorities 
to  protect  the  town's  reputation.  But  the  trials 
which  remain  really  speak  highly  for  the  morals 
of  the  town.  The  amount  of  real  uncleanness 
brought  to  light  is  singularly  small ;  the  "  evi- 
dence "  on  which  other  convictions  were  based 


100  CONN'jlCTICUT. 

would  not  be  even  admitted  in  a  modem  court  of 
law ;  and  the  whole  makes  up  a  record  rather  of 
the  diseased  suspicions  of  the  magistrates  than 
of  the  criminality  of  their  people.  Most  of  the 
"  criminals "  better  deserved  a  medical  than  a 
"  magistratical  "  examination  ;  and  their  cases  are 
merely  a  demonstration  of  the  necessity  of  the 
recognized  rules  of  evidence,  not  of  the  immo- 
rality of  the  early  Puritans,  as  dissenting  author- 
ities are  so  fond  of  representing  them. 

Sumptuary  laws  were  attempted  in  New  Haven, 
as  in  Connecticut,  and  with  as  little  success  in  one 
as  in  the  other.  Codes  were  drawn  up  to  regulate 
prices  of  labor  and  materials,  but  they  were  prob- 
ably meant  mainly  to  regulate  the  rates  at  which 
taxes  should  be  paid  to  the  commonwealth  in 
kind,  in  materials  or  labor.  So  far  as  they  were 
meant  to  regulate  individual  contracts,  they  were 
evidently  a  failure,  and  they  were  soon  repealed. 
Rules  against  excess  in  drinking  and  in  apparel 
were  also  attempted,  with  the  usual  want  of  suc- 
cess ;  and  in  their  failure,  as  in  the  matter  of 
"watching  and  warding,"  there  are  indications 
that  kissing  is  not  the  only  thing  that  goes  by 
favor.  John  Jenner,  accused,  February  5,  1689 
(40),  of  being  drunk  with  strong  waters,  was  ac- 
quitted, "  itt  appearing  to  be  of  infirmyty  and 
occasioned  by  the  extremyty  of  the  colde." 

It  needed  but  a  few  years  for  the  little  settle- 
ment to  show  its  consciousness  of  independent  ex- 


THE  NEW  HAVEN  COLONY.  101' 

istence.  As  soon  as  the  establishment  of  hous^^s 
and  streets  had  given  it  a  corporate  appearance 
and  feeling,  its  name  was  changed,  September  1, 
1640,  to  New  Haven  (commonly  then  Newhaven). 
Another  step,  though  abortive,  shows  the  spirit  of 
the  people.  It  was  ordered,  December  25,  1641, 
"  that  a  free  school  shall  be  set  up  in  this  town." 
Davenport  was  to  ascertain  the  amount  of  money 
which  would  be  needed  for  it,  and  to  draw  up  rules 
for  the  institution.  Contemporary  expressions  go 
to  show  that  the  intent  was  not  to  establish  a  mere 
school,  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word,  but  to  lay 
a  foundation  which  could  develop  easily  into  some 
such  institution  as  the  powerful  university  with 
which  New  Haven's  name  is  now  so  closely  linked. 
It  should  not  be  forgotten  that,  at  least  in  spirit, 
the  establishment  of  Harvard  by  the  common- 
wealth of  Massachusetts  Bay  had  a  contemporary 
rival  in  the  straggling  little  settlement  on  the 
shores  of  Long  Island  Sound.  But  for  the  differ- 
ent circumstances  of  the  two  peoples,  and  a  defer- 
ence to  Harvard's  appeals  for  support,  their  two 
universities  would  have  been  born  almost  together, 
and  the  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversaries  of 
Harvard  and  Yale  would  have  been  almost  coinci- 
dent. 

When  the  separate  existence  of  New  Haven  had 
lasted  some  five  years,  her  government  developed 
into  a  confederation.  Many  reasons  might  be 
assigned   for  such  a  result.      The  towns  which 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSriY  OF  CALIFORNU 

SANTA  BARBARA 


102  CONNECTICUT. 

had  been  founded  on  the  New  Haven  purchases 
had  been  separated  from  the  parent  stem  long 
enough  to  make  Mr.  Davenport's  opinion  some- 
thing less  than  all-sufficient,  and  to  develop  a 
higher  regard  for  the  opinion  of  their  own  minis- 
ters ;  for  there  was  a  strong  ecclesiastical  tap-root 
to  town  independence,  even  under  the  New  Haven 
system.  Again,  it  may  well  be  imagined  that 
men  like  Goodyear  and  Leete  had  not  been  blind 
to  the  growth  and  possibilities  of  the  Connecticut 
colony.  New  Haven  claimed  only  what  she  had 
bought :  Connecticut  claimed  every  square  foot  on 
which  a  Pequot  had  ever  collected  tribute.  If 
New  Haven  was  to  maintain  her  solidarity  against 
her  rival's  indefinite  and  penetrating  claims,  it 
must  be  by  turning  a  nominal  hegemony  into  a 
real  commonwealth.  Closely  connected  with  this 
point  was  the  proposed  New  England  Union.  If 
New  Haven  were  left  out  of  it,  she  was  practically 
subordinated  to  her  rival  in  the  new  territory.  If 
she  was  to  present  her  claim  to  admission,  it  must 
be  with  all  the  prestige  derivable  from  a  cluster 
of  allied,  not  dependent,  towns.  It  is  significant, 
perhaps,  that  the  first  suggestion  of  the  change 
comes  in  the  appointment,  April  6,  1643,  of  com- 
missioners to  the  New  England  Union  "for  the 
jurisdiction  of  New  Haven."  It  is  quite  probable 
that  the  leading  men  of  the  various  towns  had 
already  agreed  on  the  general  form  which  the 
"  jurisdiction  "  was  to  take,  but  it  was  not  settled 


THE  NEW  HAVEN   COLONY.  103 

until  October,  owing  to  difficulties  in  the  case  of 
Milford. 

During  Milford's  four  years  of  nominal  depend- 
ence, but  real  independence,  it  had  gone  so  far  as 
to  admit  six  men  as  "  free  burgesses,"  or  voters, 
although  they  were  not  church-members.  With 
the  rise  of  the  commonwealth  proposition,  the  ad- 
mission of  these  six  Milford  burgesses  became  a 
great  international  question,  which  cost  a  whole 
summer  of  negotiation  before  it  could  be  settled. 
It  was  finally  agreed  that  the  six  should  continue 
to  vote  in  peace  so  long  as  they  remained  in  Mil- 
ford, but  that  they  should  not  hold  office,  and  that 
Milford  should  never  again  scandalize  the  other 
towns  by  thus  violating  their  common  law. 

Harmony  having  thus  been  restored,  a  consti- 
tution for  the  commonwealth  was  agreed  upon, 
October  27,  1643,  by  a  general  court,  consisting 
of  Governor  Eaton,  now  first  so  called ;  Deputy- 
governor  Goodyear  ;  three  magistrates  ;  and  eight 
deputies,  two  each  from  New  Haven,  Milford, 
Guilford,  and  Stamford.  The  features  of  the  new 
constitution  were  not  essentially  different  from 
that  of  1639.  Free  burgesses,  or  voters,  were  to 
be  church-members  only,  except  the  six  Milford 
anomalies.  Only  church-members  were  to  hold 
office.  The  rights  of  "  free  planters,"  not  church- 
members,  were  limited  to  "  their  inheritance  and 
to  commerce."  Each  town  was  to  have  its  par- 
ticular  court,  elected   by  the   burgesses,  dealing 


104  CONNECTICUT. 

with  causes  of  not  more  than  <£20,  or,  in  criminal 
cases,  involving  no  greater  punishment  than 
"stocking  and  whipping''  or  a  fine  of  <£5,  with 
right  of  appeal  to  the  general  court.  In  the 
election  of  governor  and  other  commonwealth  of- 
ficers, voters  need  not  go  to  New  Haven,  but 
might  vote  by  proxy.  The  general  court,  con- 
sisting of  governor,  deputy  governor,  magistrates 
and  two  deputies  from  each  town,  was  to  meet  at 
New  Haven  twice  a  year,  on  the  first  Wednesday 
in  April  and  the  last  Wednesday  in  October,  the 
latter  being  the  court  of  election.  The  magis- 
trates were  to  meet  separately,  as  a  court  of  mag- 
istrates, on  the  Monday  preceding  the  stated  gen- 
eral court  meetings,  to  try  weighty  and  capital 
cases  or  appeals  from  town  courts,  and  to  perform 
most  of  the  functions  of  a  grand  jury.  Ordinary 
trial  by  jury  was  not  a  part  of  the  New  Haven 
system. 

The  general  court  was  to  provide  for  the  main- 
tenance of  the  purity  of  religion,  and  "  suppress  the 
contrary  ;  "  to  make  and  repeal  laws,  and  require 
the  execution  of  them  ;  to  call  magistrates  to  ac- 
count for  misdemeanors ;  to  impose  upon  the  in- 
habitants an  oath  of  fidelity  and  subjection  to  the 
laws  ;  to  settle  and  levy  taxes  ;  and  to  try  causes 
on  appeal  from  any  of  the  other  courts.  Its  pro- 
ceedings were  to  be  in  accordance  with  the  Scrip- 
tures, and  no  law  was  to  pass  but  by  a  vote  of  a 
majority  of  the  magistrates  and  a  majority  of  the 
deputies. 


THE  NEW  HAVEN  COLONY.  105 

At  the  next  stated  meeting  in  April,  1644,  it 
•was  ordered  that  "the  judicial  laws  of  God,  as 
they  were  delivered  by  Moses,"  should  be  consid- 
ered binding  on  all  offenders,  and  should  be  a  rule 
to  all  the  courts  of  the  jurisdiction,  "  till  they  be 
branched  out  into  particulars  hereafter."  These 
are  probably  the  provisions  which  have  done  most 
to  develop  the  current  notions  of  the  criminal 
code  of  New  Haven.  They  have  very  probably 
reflected  upon  the  sister  colony  as  well,  and,  since 
the  provisions  of  the  Connecticut  criminal  code 
were  like  those  of  New  Haven,  though  without 
their  expressed  basis,  both  have  helped  to  give 
currency  to  Mr.  Peters's  absurd  code  of  "  Blue 
Laws."  A  general  reference  to  "  the  Mosaic  code 
of  New  Haven  "  has  usually  been  held  sufficient 
rebutter  to  any  attempt  to  argue  against  the  Blue 
Law  myth.  Nor  is  the  reason  far  to  seek.  It  is 
not  a  violent  assumption  that  the  phrase,  "  the 
judicial  laws  of  God,  as  they  were  delivered  by 
Moses,"  has  not,  to  the  average  reader  or  hearer 
of  the  present  time,  that  clear-cut  significance 
which  it  had  to  those  who  first  used  it,  or  which 
the  death  statutes  of  a  modern  state  have  to  the 
criminal  lawyer.  It  is  true  that  the  New  Haven 
general  statute,  agreeing  generally  with  those  of 
Connecticut  and  Massachusetts,  made  some  fifteen 
offenses  capital  crimes,  —  murder,  treason,  perjury 
aimed  at  life,  kidnapping,  bestiality,  sodomy, 
adultery,  incest,  rape,  blasphemy  in   its   highest 


106  CONNECTICUT. 

form,  idolatry,  witchcraft,  "presumptuous"  Sab- 
bath-breaking, the  third  conviction  for  burglary- 
committed  on  the  Lord's  day,  and  rebellion  against 
parents.  A  formidable  catalogue  truly.  But 
why  is  it  the  only  one  to  be  brought  to  the  bar  ? 
Mackintosh,  speaking  in  the  English  House  of 
Commons  so  late  as  March  2,  1819,  said :  "  I  hold 
in  my  hand  a  list  of  those  offenses  which  at  this 
moment  are  capital,  in  number  two  hundred  and 
tiventy-three.''''  The  New  Haven  and  Connecticut 
colonists,  by  a  single  stroke  of  legislation  more 
than  a  century  and  a  half  before,  had  reduced 
their  list  of  capital  offenses  to  fifteen.  If  such  a 
reduction,  with  hardly  an  execution  for  any  of 
them,  be  not  considered  a  long  step  in  the  history 
of  law  reform,  law  reformers  are  hard  to  satisfy. 

The  government  established  in  1643  continued 
without  essential  change  until  its  final  absorption 
by  Connecticut.  Two  towns,  however,  were 
added  to  the  four  already  named.  Southold,  L. 
I.,  bought  in  1640,  was  admitted  as  a  town  in 
1649.  It  was  at  first  called  by  its  Indian  name, 
Yennicott  or  Yennicock ;  and  its  English  name, 
Southold  or  Southhold,  perhaps  signified  the  place 
of  strength  to  the  south  of  New  Haven.  It  ex- 
tended some  forty  miles  west  of  Orient  Point. 
Totoket,  or  Branford,  was  a  part  of  the  second 
purchase  of  1638.  Samuel  Eaton  having  failed 
to  settle  it,  it  was  granted  in  1640  to  another  dis- 
satisfied Wethersfield  company,  headed  by  Wil- 


THE  NEW  HAVEN   COLONY.  107 

liam  Swayne,  and  Branford  was  admitted  as  a 
town  in  1651.  In  1644  it  had  been  reinforced  by- 
Rev.  Abraham  Pierson's  church  from  Southamp- 
ton, L.  I.,  which  sought  a  more  congenial  home 
under  the  New  Haven  jurisdiction  when  its  town 
joined  Connecticut.  But  Pierson's  church  was 
not  to  escape  thus.  Within  twenty  years,  the 
union  was  consummated,  and  the  church  again 
broke  away  from  Connecticut  and  founded  New- 
ark, N.  J.,  a  settlement  which  has  given  to  New 
Jersey  the  mass  of  the  Connecticut  family  names 
which  have  appeared  in  her  history.  Hunting- 
ton, L.  I.,  also  applied  to  be  admitted  in  1656  and 
1659,  but  was  refused  because  of  her  demand  that 
her  local  court  should  try  all  her  civil  cases  and 
all  criminal  cases  not  capital. 

Six  towns,  therefore,  —  New  Haven,  Milford, 
Guilford,  Stamford,  Southold  and  Branford,  — 
made  up  the  New  Haven  jurisdiction  during  its 
short  history.  With  the  exception  of  Stamford 
and  Southold,  the  commonwealth  lay  immediately 
around  New  Haven.  Its  smaller  members  are  now 
villages  which  offer  little  that  is  striking  to  the 
traveler  or  visitor.  Time  was  when  they  were 
members  of  an  almost  independent  republic  whose 
hopes  were  high,  and  whose  history  serves  at 
least  to  show  that  the  New  England  town  system 
cannot  thrive  in  an  unfriendly  soil. 


CHAPTER  Vni. 

THE   SAYBROOK  ATTEMPT   AND   ITS  FAILIJEE. 

The  Saybrook  colony  was  the  offspring,  in  one 
sense,  of  the  English  king's  committal  to  the 
policy  of  "  thorough."  There  was  in  the  king- 
dom, in  addition  to  the  comparatively  helpless 
lower-class  victims  of  Laud,  an  unknown  number 
of  gentlemen  of  good  family  who  were  thoroughly 
indoctrinated  with  Puritanism,  or  with  kindred 
forms  of  dissent.  These  had  as  yet  escaped  serious 
persecution,  partly  through  family  and  social  influ- 
ences, partly  through  the  English  reserve  which,  by 
checking  any  too  violent  expressions  of  dissent, 
had  enabled  family  and  social  influences  to  have 
their  full  effect.  About  1634-35  there  were  strong 
indications  that  the  period  of  peace  for  this  class 
was  approaching  its  limit.  Wentworth,  in  Ireland, 
was  constructing  the  covered  way  by  which  the 
liberties  of  England  were  to  be  assailed.  The 
heart  of  all  Protestant  Europe  was  yet  faint  and 
sick  at  the  hideous  atrocities  of  Tilly's  musketeers 
at  the  sack  of  Magdeburg :  was  any  more  mercy 
to  be  expected  by  English  cities  at  the  hands  of 
Wentworth's   Irish  musketeers  ?     And   who  was 


THE  SAYBROOK  ATTEMPT.  109 

to  suppose  that  the  supple  body  known  as  a  parlia- 
ment under  Elizabeth  and  James  would  take  the 
law  into  its  own  hands  against  Charles  ?  Or  that 
Puritanism  would  develop  a  soldiery  before  which 
the  king's  men  would  faint  and  fly  ?  Patient  and 
reserved  men  forgot  that  other  Englishmen  were 
as  reserved,  as  patient  and  as  dangerous  as  they, 
and  concluded  that  hope  was  gone  from  England, 
and  that  there  was  no  refuge  but  across  the  At- 
lantic. 

It  may  be  that  the  supposititious,  or  at  least 
unverifiable  grant  to  Warwick  by  the  Council  of 
Plymouth  in  1630  was  a  pious  fraud,  designed  to 
provide  some  such  refuge,  if  the  fear  of  confisca- 
tion of  charter  rights  should  deter  Massachusetts 
from  receiving  refugees.  The  difficulty  is  to  un- 
derstand why  the  declaration  of  a  baseless  claim 
by  the  Say  and  Sele  patentees,  in  the  country  and 
during  the  life  of  the  original  owner,  should  not 
have  been  met  by  a  prompt  contradiction.  This 
is  the  strongest  secondary  evidence  of  the  validity 
of  the  grant  to  Warwick  in  1630,  and  its  transfer 
to  the  Say  and  Sele  Company  in  1631,  —  that  in 
1634-35  the  latter  patentees  made  active  and  pub- 
lic preparations  to  enforce  their  claims  to  Con- 
necticut and  to  remove  there  themselves,  without 
exciting  any  complaint  or  opposition  on  the  part 
of  the  Plymouth  Council  or  their  later  grantees. 
That  broad  excuse,  "the  confusion  of  the  times,'* 


110  CONNECTICUT. 

may  serve  as  a  partial  but  hardly  as  an  entirely 
satisfactory  explanation. 

John  Winthrop,  Sen.,  the  governor  of  Massachu- 
setts, had  led  the  great  Puritan  migration  to  that 
colony  in  1630.  His  son,  John  Winthrop,  Jr., 
did  not  reach  Boston  until  October,  1635.  He  was 
then  a  young  man  of  twenty-nine,  of  good  natural 
parts,  well  improved  at  Cambridge  and  Dublin 
and  by  travel  on  the  continent,  and  he  had  already 
shown  that  philosophical,  equable  and  judicial 
temperament  which  made  him  a  trusted  leader  of 
men  throughout  his  life.  One  of  the  bitterest 
critics  of  the  early  Massachusetts  system  hesitates 
before  the  beauties  of  the  younger  Winthrop's 
character,  and.  calls  him  "  perhaps  the  brightest 
ornament  of  New  England  Puritanism."  His 
father's  connection  with  the  Say  and  Sele  associates 
must  have  been  close,  and  they  must  have  seen 
in  the  son  the  qualities  they  needed.  It  thus  hap- 
pened that  the  son,  on  his  vray  to  Boston,  was  di- 
verted into  an  interest  in  Connecticut,  which 
finally  made  him  more  vitally  important  to  that 
colony  than  the  father  had  ever  been  to  Massachu- 
setts. 

Articles  of  agreement  were  entered  into  July 
7,  1635,  between  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  of  the  one 
part,  and  Viscount  Say  and  Sele,  Sir  Arthur  Has- 
selring,  Sir  Richard  Saltonstall,  Henry  Lawrence, 
Henry  Darley  and  George  Fen  wick  of  the  other. 
Robert,  Lord  Brooke,  did  not  sign,  but  was  a  party 


THE  SAY  BROOK  ATTEMPT.  Ill 

in  interest.  Winthrop  was  to  be  fully  compen- 
sated for  his  time  and  trouble,  was  to  act  as  "  gov- 
ernor of  the  river  Connecticut  in  New  England, 
and  of  the  harbor  and  places  adjoining,"  for  one 
year,  and  was  to  build  a  fort  at  the  mouth  of  the 
river,  with  a  garrison  of  fifty  men,  reserving  1,000 
or  1,500  acres  of  good  ground,  near  the  fort,  for  its 
maintenance.  His  commission  as  governor  was 
signed,  sealed  and  delivered  to  him  July  18. 

Winthrop  arrived  at  Boston  just  a  week  before 
the  first  considerable  migration  to  the  Connecticut 
"Valley.  It  is  said  that  the  intruding  settlers  made 
an  agreement  with  him  that,  if  the  real  owners, 
"their  lordships,"  should  require  them  to  remove 
from  their  new  settlements,  they  were  to  do  so  on 
receiving  satisfaction  for  their  improvements,  or 
corresponding  locations  elsewhere.  The  agree- 
ment is  referred  to  in  the  preamble  to  the  Massa- 
chusetts commission  to  the  provisional  magistrates 
of  Connecticut ;  but  it  is  curious  that  it  does  not 
seem  to  be  referred  to  in  the  elaborate  series  of 
instructions  to  Winthrop,  and  letters  to  the  king 
and  various  English  noblemen  in  regard  to  the 
charter,  although  it  would  have  materially  strength- 
ened their  case  under  the  Fenwick  purchase,  as 
showing  constructive  permission  from  "  their  lord- 
ships "  to  settle,  in  default  of  notice  to  quit.  Win- 
throp, to  whom  the  instructions  were  addressed, 
was  the  very  person  who  in  1635,  as  agent  for 
the  proprietors,  had   given  them  conditional  per- 


112  CONNECTICUT. 

mission  to  settle  in  the  Connecticut  Valley  ;  and 
yet,  in  1661,  they  allow  themselves  to  appear  to 
his  majesty  as  originally  sheer  interlopers.  In 
spite  of  the  authority  of  the  father's  journal,  the 
statement  seems  to  lack  some  particulars  essential 
to  a  clear  understanding  of  it. 

The  mouth  of  the  river  had  already  been  seized 
by  an  English  force,  in  order  to  keep  it  from 
the  Dutch  ;  but  the  works  constructed  must  have 
been  of  the  most  primitive  character.  A  party 
of  twenty  men,  sent  by  Winthrop,  arrived  at  the 
fort  and  took  possession  November  24,  1635 ;  and 
a  little  later  came  Winthrop  himself  and  Lyon 
Gardiner,  who  soon  became  commander  of  the  fort. 
For  some  years  the  garrison  endured  even  more 
than  the  usual  monotony  of  a  frontier  fort.  Its 
men  were  ambushed  and  attacked  during  the  Pe- 
quot  struggle,  but  were  restricted  to  a  defensive 
warfare.  Even  settlement  was  really  hindered  by 
the  fort.  It  drew  danger,  from  Dutch  or  Indians, 
as  the  candle  draws  the  moth  ;  and  its  direct 
protection  was  only  efficient  enough  to  keep  its 
people  within  the  fort,  and  in  a  few  scattered 
buildings  very  near  it. 

George  Fenwick  had  visited  the  place  the  year 
of  VVinthrop's  assumption  of  control.  About  mid- 
summer of  the  year  1639  he  returned  with  much 
more  parade.  He  had  two  vessels,  which  brought 
also  his  wife.  Lady  Alice  Boteler,  and  his  family. 
The  name  Saybrook  was  given  to  the  settlement 


THE  SAY  BROOK  ATTEMPT.  113 

in  honor  of  the  two  leading  proprietors,  Lord  Say 
and  Lord  Brooke ;  but  the  contemporary  genius 
for  misspelling,  reacted  upon  by  the  neighborhood 
of  the  river  and  the  Sound,  made  it  read  Seabrook 
for  many  years  upon  the  Connecticut  records. 

The  first  minister  was  Rev.  Thomas  Peters, 
followed  in  1646  by  Rev.  James  Fitch,  who  re- 
moved in  1660  to  settle  at  Norwich  with  most  of 
his  church,  there  to  become  very  much  entangled 
with  the  affairs  of  the  Indians  and  the  manage- 
ment of  their  lands.  Besides  these.  Captain  John 
Mason,  a  renowned  man  of  war  and  major  general 
of  the  Connecticut  colony's  militia,  and  Thomas 
Leffingwell,  were  the  leading  men  ;  but  there  were 
many  other  Saybrook  names  which  the  Norwich 
migration  transferred  to  that  part  of  the  common- 
wealth and  subsequently  far  beyond  its  borders. 

The  tract  of  land  usually  considered  as  under 
the  jurisdiction  of  Saybrook  was  about  ten  miles 
in  length,  divided  midway  by  the  Connecticut 
River,  and  extending  six  or  eight  miles  back  from 
Long  Island  Sound.  Small  as  this  territory  was, 
it  was  of  great  importance  as  controlling  the  only 
water  exit  from  the  Hartford  region,  and  as  the 
seat  of  the  representative  of  the  only  paper  title 
within  the  future  commonwealth.  The  authori- 
ties of  Connecticut  showed  their  usual  acuteness 
by  forming  close  relations  with  Fenwick.  He  was 
admitted  to  the  first  conference  which  formed  the 
New  England  union  in  1643 ;  and,  as  that  con- 


114  CONNECTICUT. 

federation  recognized  only  the  four  colonies  of 
Massachusetts,  Plymouth,  Connecticut  and  New 
Haven,  Connecticut  shrewdly  appointed  him  as 
one  of  her  commissioners  in  1643  and  1644,  with 
Edward  Hopkins  as  the  other.  Fen  wick  was  thus 
identified  with  Connecticut  as  closely  as  he  could 
have  been  without  an  actual  transfer  of  the  rights 
which  he  represented.  His  second  term  of  service 
as  commissioner,  in  1644,  enabled  him  to  render 
most  important  service  to  Connecticut  in  her 
boundary  disputes  with  Massachusetts,  which  col- 
ony laid  claim  before  the  commissioners  to  the 
Pequot  country.  Fenwick  interposed  a  protest 
against  any  decision  which  should  in  any  way  im- 
peach his  principals'  title  to  the  territory  in  dis- 
pute, and  the  commissioners  decided  to  postpone 
the  decision  until  the  patentees  could  be  heard 
from.  The  delay  served  to  enable  Connecticut  to 
secure  a  firmer  hold  on  the  conquered  territory 
before  a  final  decision  became  imperative. 

This  diplomatic  stroke  had  hardly  been  dealt 
when  the  Connecticut  general  court  appointed  a 
committee  to  treat  with  Fenwick  for  the  sale  of 
Saybrook.  The  logic  of  events  had  been  too 
much  for  the  Saybrook  colony.  The  state  of 
things  at  home  was  no  longer  what  it  had  been  in 
1634.  Whether  Jenny  Geddes  ever  threw  her 
stool  or  not,  a  train  of  events  had  been  started, 
bringing  calamities  to  royalty  and  relief  to  the 
persecuted ;  the  once  supple  parliament  had  taught 


THE  SAYBROOK  ATTEMPT.  115 

Wentworth  the  real  meaning  of  "thorough;" 
and,  above  all,  Cromwell  and  his  Ironsides  had 
charged  at  Marston  Moor.  Puritan  gentlemen  in 
England  had  other  things  to  think  of  than  emi- 
grating to  Say  brook ;  and  Fenwick  was  hopelessly 
isolated.  Connecticut  had  the  purpose  and  power 
of  growth,  but  there  was  no  longer  hope  for  Say- 
brook. 

The  agreement  of  sale  was  made  December  5, 
1644.  Fenwick  made  over  the  fort,  its  appurte- 
nances, and  the  land  in  the  neighborhood  to  the 
colony  of  Connecticut.  Lands  not  yet  disposed  of 
were  to  be  distributed  by  a  committee  of  five,  of 
whom  Fenwick  was  to  be  one.  The  rest  of  the 
Warwick  patent,  from  Saybrook  to  Narragansett 
Bay,  was  to  be  brought  by  Fenwick  "  under  the 
jurisdiction  of  Connecticut,  if  it  came  into  his 
power."  In  return,  Fenwick  was  to  have  the  use 
of  the  buildings  within  the  fort  for  ten  years,  with 
an  impost  on  exports  of  corn,  biscuit,  beaver  and 
cattle  which  should  pass  the  fort  during  that  time. 
As  security  to  Fenwick,  the  general  court  ordered 
in  the  following  February,  in  its  ratification  of 
the  agreement,  that  every  master  of  a  vessel  should 
land  at  the  fort  while  passing  it,  and  deliver  to 
the  commandant  of  the  fort  a  note  of  the  duti- 
able part  of  his  cargo.  In  1646  the  amount  was 
limited  to  j6180  per  annum,  the  total  duty  col- 
lected during  the  ten  years  being  about  X  1,600. 

The  imposition  of  the  duty  nearly  disrupted 


116  CONNECTICUT. 

the  New  England  union.  In  1647  Massachusetts 
filed  a  protest  against  it  before  the  commission- 
ers of  the  union.  She  claimed  that  Connecticut 
had  no  right  to  levy  on  the  Massachusetts  towns 
of  the  upper  Connecticut  Valley  a  tax  which 
■was  to  inure  to  Connecticut's  sole  benefit  in  the 
acquisition  of  Saybrook.  In  1649  the  commis- 
sioners of  the  other  three  colonies  decided  against 
the  protest  of  Massachusetts.  Thereupon  the 
Massachusetts  commissioners  exhibited  an  order 
of  their  general  court,  levying  a  tax  on  all  goods 
of  the  other  colonies  imported  into  or  exported 
from  Boston,  ostensibly  for  the  repair  of  the  cas- 
tle in  the  harbor.  The  suspiciously  opportune 
circumstance  of  the  castle's  need  of  repairs  just  at 
this  time  excited  considerable  anger  in  the  other 
colonies  ;  and  this  was  intensified  in  1653  by  the 
refusal  of  Massachusetts  to  join  the  other  colonies 
in  a  war  against  the  Dutch  and  Indians.  Perhaps 
the  feeling  in  the  latter  case  was  the  greater  on 
account  of  the  attitude  assumed  by  Massachusetts, 
that  of  an  advocate  of  peace  and  righteousness, 
averse  to  an  offensive  war ;  whereas  the  fact,  as 
it  seemed  to  contemporary  observers,  was  that  the 
governing  desire  of  the  Bay  colony  was  to  con- 
vince the  other  colonies  of  their  impotence,  and  of 
their  folly  in  supporting  the  refusal  of  Connecti- 
cut to  yield  to  Massachusetts  even  in  the  petty 
affair  of  the  impost.  With  the  expiration  of  Fen- 
wick's  ten  years'  term  the  retaliatory  measures 


THE  SAYBROOK  ATTEMPT.  117 

were  quietly  allowed  to  disappear :  probably  the 
castle  had  been  put  into  good  repair  by  that 
time. 

With  the  conclusion  of  the  agreement  of  1644^ 
Say  brook  subsided  into  the  position  of  a  Connec- 
ticut township.  Fenwick  continued  to  reside  at 
the  fort,  but  took  no  prominent  part  in  Connecti- 
cut affairs.  The  Connecticut  general  court  re- 
quested him  to  return  to  England  at  his  earliest 
convenience,  and  act  as  its  agent  in  procuring 
that  grant  of  the  entire  jurisdiction  under  the 
patent  which  he  had  promised  to  get  "if  it  ever 
came  within  his  power  to  do  so."  Lady  Fenwick 
died  at  Saybiook  about  1648,  and  her  husband 
soon  after  returned  to  England,  giving  up  the  last 
vestige  of  the  commercial  city  which  was  to  have 
graced  the  mouth  of  the  Connecticut.  He  died 
in  1657,  before  the  colony  applied  for  a  charter. 

The  Connecticut  authorities  were  diligent  in 
disseminating  the  idea,  and  were  perhaps  honest 
in  their  own  belief,  that  Colonel  Fen  wick's  sale 
had  been  a  transfer  of  the  patent  and  of  the  juris- 
diction thereunder,  for  this  gave  the  colony  a 
quasi-legal  standing  which  it  had  not  before. 
When  Massachusetts,  during  the  impost  and  boun- 
dary disputes,  impugned  the  standing  of  Connec- 
ticut as  a  colony  unauthorized  and  unwarranted 
by  law,  the  latter  colony  always  replied  that  it 
had  a  charter  or  patent  in  England,  but  that  "  the 
confusion  of  the  times  "  prevented  it  from  show- 


118  CONNECTICUT. 

ing  anything  more  than  a  copy.  It  was  when  the 
confusion  began  to  disappear,  and  the  validity  of 
the  excuse  with  it,  that  the  colony  took  steps  to 
secure  a  charter  from  the  king.  In  the  instruc- 
tions to  Governor  Winthrop,  the  colonial  authori- 
ties lay  great  stress  on  the  Fenwick  sale  as  in- 
volving the  equitable  transfer  of  the  patent  itself, 
although  the  terms  of  the  agreement  contradict 
them.  They  go  so  far  as  to  say,  "  Had  we  not 
been  too  credulous  and  confident  of  the  goodness 
and  faithfulness  of  that  gentleman  [Fenwick],  we 
might  possibly  have  been  at  a  better  pass  ; "  and 
they  direct  the  governor  to  take  steps  to  recover 
from  Fenwick's  heirs  the  amount  paid  to  him. 
They  even  sequestered  the  colonial  estate  of  Mrs. 
CuUick,  Fenwick's  sister  and  his  New  England 
heir,  until  .£500  were  repaid  and  further  claims 
were  remitted.  It  would  be  far  more  than  even- 
handed  justice  to  the  fathers  of  the  Connecticut 
colony  to  admit  that  they  were  the  simple  victims 
of  the  wiles  of  George  Fenwick :  if  he  could  so 
easily  delude  them,  he  was  more  successful  than 
their  other  contemporaries.  They  seem  to  have 
understood  perfectly  in  1644  the  wares  for  which 
they  were  then  bargaining,  and  were  quite  aware 
that  this  part  of  the  consideration  was  purely 
contingent.  So  impossible  was  it  in  1661  for  the 
contingency  to  be  fulfilled  that  the  letter  of  the 
colony  to  the  king  takes  conspicuous  care  not  to 
mention  the  Fenwick  agreement  at  all.     Perhaps 


THE  SAYBROOK  ATTEMPT.  119 

its  attitude  toward  the  Fenwick  family  may  best 
be  explained  as  that  of  men  who  had  bought  a 
contingency,  found  it  less  valuable  than  they  ex- 
pected, and  were  unwilling  to  confess  their  error 
even  to  one  another. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  romantic  life  and  death 
of  Lady  Fenwick  ought  not  to  give  to  her  hus- 
band's character  that  generous  glamour  which  Con- 
necticut historians  have  been  too  prone  to  allow 
him.  It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  he  deliber- 
ately sold  and  appropriated  the  proceeds  of  prop- 
erty of  which  he  was  not  the  sole  owner,  only  the 
agent.  The  colonial  authorities  yielded  to  his  de- 
mand for  .£1,600  for  property  which  was  not  his, 
rather  than  see  it  sold  to  the  Dutch  ;  and  they 
paid  the  sum  agreed  upon.  But  the  substantial 
iniquity  of  the  transaction  undoubtedly  stirred 
them  to  a  greater  eagerness  to  make  use  of  the 
invalidity  of  one  feature  of  the  agreement  in  order 
to  secui'e  substantial  justice  in  others.  On  the 
whole,  the  merits  of  ^;he  case  seem  to  be  with  the 
colony. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

CONNECTICUT   UNTIL  THE  UNION. 

It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that  the  fathers  of 
the  Connecticut  colony  seem  to  have  been  too 
much  immersed  in  the  struggle  for  existence  to 
give  us  any  record  of  the  appearance  of  men  and 
things  in  these  early  years.  In  this  respect,  Con- 
necticut is  unfortunate  beyond  any  of  her  sister 
commonwealths.  Hartford,  the  subsequent  capi- 
tal of  the  colony  and  state,  may  be  taken  as  an 
example.  There  does  not  seem  to  be  any  surviv- 
ing map,  plan,  picture,  sketch  or  verbal  descrip- 
tion of  the  town,  or  of  any  public  or  private  build- 
ing, until  about  the  time  of  the  Revolution.  Even 
the  zeal  of  the  antiquary  finds  "  no  thorough- 
fare "  inscribed  almost  immediately  on  every  clue 
which  would  have  been  a  promising  one  in  Massa- 
chusetts. The  contemporary  letters,  journals, 
etc.,  seem  to  take  existing  things  for  granted. 
The  minds  of  the  writers  were  occupied  almost 
exclusively  with  the  actions  of  men ;  and  the 
pregnant  incidental  hints  as  to  social  features, 
manners  and  customs,  topography,  etc.,  which 
are  so  frequently  furnished  in  other  colonies  by 


CONNECTICUT   UNTIL    THE    UNION.  121 

writers  who  had  no  notion  that  they  were  furnish- 
ing them,  are  not  found  in  Connecticut.  This  was 
due  to  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  early  struggles 
in  the  colony.  Difficulties  of  soil,  commerce  and 
general  industry  were  no  new  matters  with  them  : 
their  wits  were  working  mainly  to  know  what 
other  men  might  do  or  could  do  ;  how  Massachu- 
setts men  would  act  about  the  boundary  line  ;  how 
the  Dutch  would  act  about  Long  Island  and  the 
territory  west  of  the  Connecticut  River ;  how  Eng- 
lishmen would  settle  their  home  government ;  and 
what  would  be  the  influence  on  the  fortunes  of 
the  little  congeries  of  towns  which,  formed  with- 
out a  legal  title,  had  never  acquired  one  except 
from  a  man  who  never  had  it  and  did  not  profess 
to  sell  it.  Determined  as  they  were  to  maintain 
the  integrity  of  their  colonial  existence,  the  im- 
pediments were  enormous,  and  almost  all  of  them 
lay  in  possible  human  action.  It  is  no  wonder, 
then,  that  the  early  official  and  unofficial  records 
of  Connecticut  deal  so  largely  with  this  one  side 
of  human  history,  and  give  us  so  little  of  any 
other. 

Antiquarian  zeal  has  overcome  some  of  these 
difficulties.  The  process  of  tracing  back  land  ti- 
tles through  the  records  of  land  transfers  has  given 
us  an  excellent  map  of  Hartford  in  1640,  which, 
though  partly  conjectural,  gives  what  is  probably 
a  very  close  representation  of  the  town.  It  lies 
on  the  west  bank  of  the  Connecticut  River,  where 


122  CONNECTICUT. 

the  river  runs  nearly  due  south.  Running  east- 
ward, through  the  southern  central  part  of  the 
town,  is  the  "  little  river,"  or  "  riveret,"  a  swift- 
flowing  brook,  whose  depth  varied  with  the  sea- 
sons. The  bulk  of  the  town  was  thus  to  the  north 
of  the  little  river,  and  to  the  west  of  the  Connecti- 
cut. Like  the  city  of  Washington,  it  was  at  first 
a  city  of  magnificent  distances.  Its  first  settlers 
laid  it  out  on  a  scale  so  generous  that  it  was  not 
necessary  to  enlarge  the  city  limits  until  1853,  or 
to  add  more  than  one  highway  to  the  original 
roads  during  the  century  and  a  half  between  the 
settlement  of  Hartford  and  its  incorporation  as  a 
city  in  1784.  Only  one  tenth  of  the  township 
was  included  in  the  city  limits  of  1784 ;  the  city 
now  covers  the  whole  township,  and  its  streets 
have  increased  from  thirty  to  three  hundred  in 
number  within  the  present  century. 

At  the  mouth  of  the  little  river  is  the  Dutch 
post  Good  Hope,  still  in  the  possession  of  its  orig- 
inal owners  in  1640,  as  Berwick-upon-Tweed  long 
marked  the  remnant  of  the  English  claims  in  Scot- 
land. Alongside  the  main  river  was  a  strip  of 
meadow  land,  and  along  the  rising  ground  which 
bounded  it  on  the  west  ran  the  highway  from  Bos- 
ton, which  passed  through  the  three  river  towns, 
and  afterwards  became  the  highway  to  the  whole 
territory  to  the  south.  On  the  north  bank  of  the 
little  river,  fronting  a  road  along  its  edge,  there 
were  placed  in  succession  the  houses  of  Governor 


CONNECTICUT   UNTIL   THE   UNION.  123 

Haynes,  of  Rev.  Mr.  Hooker,  of  Rev.  Mr.  Stone, 
and  of  Elder  Goodwin,  "  Meeting  House  Alley  " 
separating  Hooker  and  Stone.  Meeting  House 
Alley  ran  from  the  little  river  to  a  square  (now- 
State  House  Square),  some  distance  in  the  rear 
of  Stone  and  Goodwin,  and  nearly  in  the  topo- 
graphical center  of  the  town,  which  contained  the 
market  place,  the  jail,  and  the  meeting  house. 
The  mass  of  the  lots  on  this  side  of  the  town,  ex- 
cept those  fronting  on  the  little  river,  lay  east  and 
west,  perpendicular  to  the  Boston  highway  and 
the  parallel  roads.  The  lots  to  the  south  of  the 
little  river  lay  mostly  north  and  south,  perpendic- 
ular to  the  highway  along  the  little  river  and  the 
parallel  streets.  Almost  all  the  meadow  land  on 
this  side  of  the  little  river,  down  to  the  Dutch 
settlement,  was  owned  by  Edward  Hopkins,  the 
colony's  leading  merchant ;  and  to  the  southwest 
of  his  tract  was  the  estate  of  the  Wyllys  family, 
on  which  was  that  which  was  to  be  the  Charter 
Oak.  Further  up  the  little  river  were  the  tan- 
yard,  located  on  an  island ;  and  the  mill,  on  the 
northern  shore.  Outside  of  the  town  were  the 
cow  pasture,  the  ox  pasture,  the  landing,  etc.,  and 
the  roads  were  named  according  to  the  places  to 
which  they  led. 

Few  particulars  are  known  of  the  size  or  appear- 
ance of  the  meeting  house,  or  of  any  other  build- 
ing. All  the  buildings  were  very  certainly  small, 
though  the  erection  of  a  sawmill  in  1667  is  an  in- 


124  CONNECTICUT. 

dication  of  an  early  improvement  in  house-build- 
ing. The  windows  were  hardly  more  than  open- 
ings for  light  and  air ;  and  their  size  was  reduced 
by  the  scarcity  of  glass,  and  the  necessity  of  using 
oiled  linen  or  other  translucent  material  as  a  sub- 
stitute. The  meeting  house  was  too  small  to  ad- 
mit of  galleries,  or  of  anything  more  than  the  mer- 
est suggestion  of  a  pulpit.  There  was  no  plaster. 
Instead  of  pews  there  were  plain  and  hard  benches, 
and  artificial  heat  was  unknown,  even  in  the  bit- 
terest weather.  Indeed,  the  Hartford  church  had 
no  stoves  until  about  1815  ;  and  what  Lodge  calls 
"  the  ferocious  practice  "  of  baptizing  newly  bom 
infants  in  church  must  have  had  an  additional 
horror  in  the  depth  of  winter.  Finally  an  armed 
guard,  suggestive  of  Indian  neighbors,  was  an  in- 
separable accompaniment  to  religious  services,  and 
was  provided  with  seats  near  the  door.  In  the 
other  Connecticut  towns,  religious  and  other  meet- 
ings were  called  by  beat  of  drum,  one  of  the  in- 
habitants making  an  annual  contract  for  the  ser- 
vice. Hartford  alone  had  a  bell,  brought  from 
Cambridge,  which  was  probably  at  that  time  the 
only  church  or  public  bell  on  the  continent,  with 
the  exception  of  the  one  at  Jamestown,  Va.  Its 
contents  now  make  part  of  the  bell,  recast  in 
1850,  belonging  to  the  First  Congregational  Church 
of  Hartford.  New  Haven  had  no  church  bell  until 
1681. 

One  of  the  most  difficult  and  delicate  functions 


CONNECTICUT   UNTIL   THE   UNION.  125 

of  a  church  committee  in  Connecticut  and  New 
Haven  towns  was  the  seating  of  the  congregation. 
A  transfer  of  a  family  from  one  seat  to  another 
betokened  a  social  rise  or  fall.  In  the  smaller 
towns,  such  transfers  were  usually  made  by  a  ma- 
jority vote  at  a  town  meeting;  and  the  town 
records  have  numberless  entries  of  permissions 
granted  to  fortunate  and  rising  men  to  sit  "  in  the 
justice's  pew,"  or  "  in  the  cross  pew  by  the  sec- 
ond pillar,"  or  "  in  the  second  pew  on  the  right," 
the  proper  places  for  their  wives,  on  their  side  of 
the  house,  being  as  carefully  specified. 

Finally  the  meeting  house  was  used  for  a  long 
time  for  every  variety  of  secular  purposes,  not 
only  as  a  place  for  town  and  other  meetings,  but 
as  a  place  of  deposit  for  arms,  military  provisions, 
and  lost  or  stolen  property.  The  Hartford  church 
building  was  not  merely  the  scene  of  ecclesiastical 
councils :  the  meetings  of  the  New  England  com- 
missioners, of  deputies  from  other  commonwealths, 
and  even  the  exciting  conferences  with  Andros  in 
regard  to  the  charter,  took  place  here.  It  was  not 
until  toward  the  middle  of  the  next  century  that 
the  towns  began  to  see  the  incongruity  of  secular 
business  in  a  dedicated  house  of  worship,  and  be- 
gan to  erect  townhouses  and  other  distinctively 
public  buildings. 

Bad  as  were  the  roads  of  the  United  States  al- 
most everywhere  until  the  era  of  turnpikes  set  in, 
and  railroads  in  their  turn  forced  the  turnpikes  up 


126  CONNECTICUT. 

to  a  higher  standard,  the  roads  of  Hartford  and  its 
neighborhood  had  a  certain  evil  preeminence.  The 
excellence  of  the  soil  was  reflected  in  the  bad  char- 
acter of  the  roads.  Its  tenacious  clay  only  needed 
moisture  enough  to  become  a  weariness  to  the 
flesh  of  horses  and  of  men.  Within  the  last  thirty 
years,  says  one  authority,  wagons  have  been  seen 
sunk  to  the  hub  in  the  native  clay  of  Pearl  Street, 
close  to  the  center  of  the  city.  In  1774  the  town 
prisoners  for  debt  represented  to  the  general  as- 
sembly that  the  roads  were  for  a  considerable  part 
of  the  year  so  miry  and  impassable  that  no  one 
came  to  the  jail  to  bestow  alms  on  the  prisoners ; 
and  they  petitioned  that  the  jail  limits  should  be 
enlarged.  What  the  roads  must  have  been  in 
still  earlier  days  passes  speculation.  It  may  per- 
haps be  that  the  early  years  of  John  Fitch,  of 
Windsor,  spent  in  annual  experiences  of  the  hor. 
rors  of  Hartford  roads,  were  the  influence  which 
turned  his  attention  to  improving  the  waterways 
of  the  country  by  endeavoring  to  perfect  the 
steamboat. 

Mr.  J.  C.  Parsons  "cannot  discover  that  any 
land  in  the  town  is  now  in  possession  of  the  de- 
scendants of  the  original  owners,  having  been  con- 
tinuously in  the  possession  of  the  family ;  some, 
through  female  heirs,  may  possibly  be  so  held." 
This  state  of  things  is  common  to  most  Connecti- 
cut towns,  but  it  does  not  imply  that  the  original 
stock  is  dying  out.     It  is  only  a  symptom  of  the 


CONNECTICUT   UNTIL   THE   UNION.  127 

universal  readiness  to  transfer  property  and  assume 
new  propertj'^  relations.  There  is  hardly  a  Con- 
necticut town  in  which  the  names  of  the  first  set- 
tlers are  not  as  absolutely  numerous  as  at  the 
settlement ;  if  there  is  any  relative  decrease,  it  is 
due  to  the  superimposition  of  a  foreign  popula- 
tion. The  old  names,  even  the  Christian  names, 
show  a  remarkable  persistence,  and  an  equally  re- 
markable persistence  in  the  characteristic  of  prop- 
erty-holding, even  though  their  possessors  have 
exchanged  family  for  other  property.  The  origi- 
nal fecundity  is  shown  in  the  fact,  that,  in  spite  of 
this  persistence,  it  is  the  old  family  names  which 
have  shown  a  disposition  to  drift  out  of  the  com- 
monwealth by  emigration.  For  this  there  have 
been  four  main  channels :  in  early  years,  to  Ver- 
mont, and  so  over  the  border  into  New  York ; 
later,  to  Pennsylvania  (Wyoming)  and  to  central 
New  York  ;  later  still,  to  the  Western  Reserve  of 
Ohio,  and  so  throughout  that  State  and  the  West ; 
and  of  recent  years,  to  New  York  city,  and  thence 
in  every  direction.  In  addition  to  these  main 
channels,  isolated  routes  of  migration  have  been 
innumerable,  so  that  Connecticut  names  are  now 
to  be  found  in  every  part  of  the  Union.  Such  a 
steady  stream  of  migration  could  not  but  have 
hastened  this  process  of  alienation  of  family  prop- 
erty. Those  who  migrated  soon  disposed  of  their 
share  of  the  patrimony,  and  it  regularly  passed 
away  from  the  name,  though  not  necessarily  from 


128  CONNECTICUT. 

Connecticut  names  and  stock.  The  absence  of  an- 
cestral holdings  in  the  State  is  merely  a  redistri- 
bution of  the  original  holdings. 

The  Massachusetts  man  and  woman  of  1637-38 
are  the  exact  social  representatives  of  the  early- 
Connecticut  settlers,  except  so  far  as  the  poverty 
and  meagerness  of  the  Massachusetts  life  of  the 
time  were  still  further  intensified  by  the  difficul- 
ties of  an  absolutely  new  settlement.  There  are 
said  to  have  been  but  thirty  plows  at  the  time  in 
all  Massachusetts  :  what  estimate  shall  we  make 
for  the  new  and  struggling  Connecticut  colony? 
We  have,  unfortunately,  no  such  Pepys  as  Judge 
Sewall  for  early  life  in  Connecticut,  but  Sewall's 
hints  as  to  the  hardships  of  early  Massachusetts 
life  may  well  be  reinforced  and  transferred  to  our 
commonwealth.  The  utter  lack  of  a  multitude  of 
things  which  have  come  to  seem  absolute  necessa- 
ries in  the  eyes  of  their  descendants  ;  the  difficul- 
ties of  travel  and  communication  ;  the  complete 
isolation  from  the  outer  world  through  the  grim 
months  of  a  New  England  winter,  during  which 
the  sacramental  bread  in  the  churches  was  some- 
times frozen  on  the  plates ;  the  bitterness  of  the 
winter  cold  even  in  private  houses,  where  the  ink 
sometimes  froze  in  the  inkstands  within  a  few  feet 
of  the  great  fire  ;  the  utter  inadequacy  of  medical 
and  surgical  attendance  ;  the  ignorance  of  and  an- 
tagonism to  the  art  of  amusement  in  every  form  ; 
the  incongruous  mixture  of  the  civilized  and  the 


CONNECTICUT   UNTIL   THE   UNION.  129 

savage,  in  a  society  in  which  a  minister,  trained 
in  an  English  university,  might  be  called  away 
from  writing  a  treatise  on  the  dealings  of  the  Eng- 
lish commonwealth  with  its  former  king,  or  with 
the  American  churches,  to  drive  a  drunken  Indian, 
out  of  his  kitchen,  or  chaffer  with  a  hunter  for 
food  or  clothing,  —  these  were  social  conditions 
from  which  the  early  settler  did  not  escape  by  re- 
moving from  Massachusetts  to  Connecticut,  and 
they  are  more  fairly  within  the  province  of  the 
Massachusetts  historian. 

There  are,  however,  certain  visible  distinctions 
between  the  drift  of  public  events  in  Connecticut 
and  in  Massachusetts  which  make  it  difficult  to 
believe  that  there  was  not  some  hidden  differenti- 
ation between  the  people  of  the  three  migrating 
towns  and  of  the  five  which  were  left,  which  has 
colored  their  whole  subsequent  history. 

The  difficulties  between  king  and  parliament 
were  at  their  height  when  the  Connecticut  colony 
was  founded ;  and  for  more  than  half  a  century 
the  relations  of  the  house  of  Stuart  to  its  various 
opponents  formed  the  critical  public  question  for 
the  New  England  colonies.  Throughout  this  pe- 
riod there  was  probably  no  great  difference  be- 
tween the  underlying  purposes  of  the  two  colonies 
under  consideration.  Both  meant  to  preserve  the 
public  privileges  which  they  had  gained,  to  ex- 
tend their  territory  and  jurisdiction,  and  to  evade 
or  resist  the  interference  of  the  home  government 
9 


130  CONNECTICUT. 

with  their  autonomy.  But  the  methods  of  Mas- 
sachusetts were  peculiarly  her  own.  There  were 
strong  reasons,  in  the  history,  traditions,  and  con- 
sistent public  teachings  of  the  colony,  why  she 
should  pose  as  the  pronounced  champion  of  colo- 
nial liberties.  On  every  occasion  she  seems  to 
have  felt  it  to  be  incumbent  upon  her  to  assume  a 
more  or  less  decided  public  attitude,  and  equally 
incumbent  upon  her  strongest  neighbor,  Connecti- 
cut, to  support  her  by  a  similar  course.  In  very 
many  cases  Connecticut  did  so  ;  in  fact,  the  most 
common  criticism  of  her  policy  by  her  own  people 
was  that  sh§  was  too  apt  to  "  trot  after  the  Bay 
horse."  But  every  case  in  which  Connecticut  chose 
to  follow  a  policy  of  her  own  seemed  to  the  Bay 
colony  only  an  instance  of  unmanly  defection 
rather  than  of  independent  action. 

The  consistent  policy  of  Connecticut,  on  the 
other  hand,  was  to  avoid  notoriety  and  public  at- 
titudes ;  to  secure  her  privileges  without  attract- 
ing needless  notice  ;  to  act  as  intensely  and  vig- 
orously as  possible  when  action  seemed  necessary 
and  promising;  but  to  say  as  little  as  possible, 
yield  as  little  as  possible,  and  evade  as  much  as 
possible  when  open  resistance  was  evident  folly. 
Much  of  the  difference  must  have  been  due  to  the 
different  circumstances  of  the  two  colonies.  Mas- 
sachusetts, secure  in  the  possession  of  a  charter, 
must  have  felt  always  that,  even  if  beaten  down 
from  any  claim,  she  could  fall  back,  in  the  last 


CONNECTICUT   UNTIL  THE   UNION.  131 

resort,  upon  her  legal  privileges.  Connecticut, 
while  without  a  charter,  must  have  felt  the  same 
hesitation  in  following  some  of  the  leads  of  her 
neighbor  which  an  unarmored  vessel  would  feel  in 
following  some  of  the  motions  of  an  ironclad  ;  but 
the  steady  continuance  of  her  policy  after  she  had 
obtained  a  charter  seems  to  argue  some  structural 
difference  in  the  people.  Her  line  of  public  con- 
duct was  precisely  the  same  after  as  before  1662. 
And  its  success  was  remarkable :  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  the  diplomatic  skill,  forethought,  and  self- 
control  shown  by  the  men  who  guided  the  course 
of  Connecticut  during  this  period  have  seldom 
been  equaled  on  the  larger  fields  of  the  world's 
history.  As  products  of  democracy,  they  were  its 
best  vindication. 

The  period  closed  in  1691  with  the  loss  of  the 
original  charter  of  Massachusetts,  the  imposition 
of  a  new  and  restricted  charter  upon  her,  and  the 
palpable  and  even  conscious  inability  of  her  pub- 
lic men  to  make  good  by  action  the  positions  as- 
sumed in  the  past.  The  mortification  of  this  de- 
feat was  aggravated  by  the  pronounced  success  of 
the  Connecticut  policy.  The  best  of  New  Eng- 
land's historians  has  not  hesitated  to  avow  and  to 
reiterate  his  conviction,  not  only  that  Connecticut 
left  Massachusetts  in  the  lurch,  but  that  she  al- 
lowed her  application  for  a  charter  to  be  used  by 
the  royal  agents  as  an  essential  instrument  in  the 
disintegration  of  the  New  England  union  and  the 
final  humiliation  of  Massachusetts. 


132  CONNECTICUT. 

Such  a  conclusion  assumes  far  too  much.  It 
would  have  been  just,  in  the  first  place,  if  Connec- 
ticut had  ever  imitated  the  Massachusetts  posi- 
tions, and  had  given  Massachusetts  to  understand 
that  she  had  entered  the  union  for  the  purpose  of 
upholding  the  Massachusetts  policy.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  Connecticut  policy  was  a  matter  of  no- 
toriety among  New  England  public  men  from  the 
beginning.  The  accusation  of  Massachusetts  was 
wholly  an  afterthought  to  cover  her  own  want 
of  forethought  in  sacrificing  democracy  to  class 
influence,  and  in  thus  drifting  into  a  position 
where  she  was  hopelessly  stalemated.  It  must 
always  have  been  baseless,  except  on  the  supposi- 
tion that  Connecticut  was  in  some  manner  bound 
to  follow  her  neighbor's  lead,  and  to  surrender  her 
own  right  of  judgment  in  every  great  emergency, 
a  course  which  Connecticut  was  not  bound  or 
likely  to  take.  In  the  second  place,  an  admission 
of  the  legality,  with  an  impeachment  of  the  jus- 
tice, of  Connecticut's  policy,  assumes  that  a  decided 
adherence  by  Connecticut  to  the  Massachusetts 
policy  would  have  resulted  in  obtaining  a  more 
complete  autonomy  for  all  the  New  England  col- 
onies, and  would  have  saved  the  union.  But  this 
is  mere  conjecture,  and  improbable  as  well.  It  is 
no  more  probable,  at  least,  than  that  Massachu- 
setts would  have  scored  a  success  equal  to  that  of 
Connecticut  by  following  a  similar  line  of  policy. 
It  is  no  answer  to  this  to  say  that  Massachusetts 


CONNECTICUT   UNTIL    THE    UNION.  133 

preferred  failure,  after  an  heroic  resistance,  to  suc- 
cess attained  by  shifty  and  temporizing  measures  : 
the  less  said  about  the  heroism  shown  by  the  dom- 
inant class  of  Massachusetts,  in  the  events  which 
culminated  in  1691,  the  better.  Its  nullification 
of  the  articles  of  union  in  1652-54  had  taken  the 
life  out  of  them :  they  never  again  showed  any  vi- 
tality, and  the  Connecticut  charter  simply  gave 
decent  burial  to  the  corpse. 

The  facts  are,  that  these  commonwealths  were 
then  hardly  fitted  for  complete  autonomy  ;  that  the 
Connecticut  policy  obtained  about  as  much  as  was 
practicable  or  best  at  the  time,  while  the  Massa- 
chusetts policy  obtained  considerably  less.  The 
spirit  which  still  moves  the  Connecticut  workman 
to  invent  anything  rather  than  expend  a  foot- 
pound of  energy  uselessly,  seems  to  have  actuated 
the  people  from  the  beginning.  They  would  re- 
ceive Andros,  for  example,  most  deferentially, 
make  no  sign  of  resistance  until  resistance  could 
take  its  most  vigorous  and  effective  form :  then 
the  work  was  done  thoroughly,  and  almost  abso- 
lute silence  followed  until  the  next  opportunity 
for  decisive  action.  No  one  can  study  the  history 
of  the  commonwealth  without  being  struck  with 
the  individuality  of  the  people,  as  shown  in  their 
public  career  ;  or,  without  believing  that  that  in- 
dividuality was  not  due  simply  to  circumstances, 
to  their  thirty  years'  struggle  for  a  charter,  but 
that  it  belonged  to  them  even  in  Massachusetts, 
perhaps  even  in  old  England. 


134  CONNECTICUT. 

From  their  first  settlement,  Hartford  and  "  an- 
cient" Windsor  seem  to  have  gone  quietly  and 
steadily  on  in  their  natural  course  of  development. 
Wethersfield  had  migrated  without  a  minister,  and, 
for  this  or  some  other  reason,  its  course  of  devel- 
opment ran  ill  from  the  first.  Within  its  first 
half  dozen  years  of  life,  its  neighbor  towns  and 
New  Haven  were  compelled  to  offer  "  loving  coun- 
sel "  as  to  Wethersfield  difiiculties  ;  and  Daven- 
port, of  New  Haven,  put  his  into  the  wise  sugges- 
tion that  the  minority  should  migrate  again.  The 
minority  who  acted  on  this  advice  settled  at  Stam- 
ford and  formed  a  New  Haven  town.  In  1644 
another  portion  of  the  Wethersfield  minority,  as 
has  been  said,  removed  to  the  New  Haven  juris- 
diction and  formed  part  of  the  town  of  Branford. 

There  seems  to  have  been  no  defined  method  of 
turning  a  settlement  into  a  political  "  town,"  be- 
yond the  mere  act  of  the  general  court  in  receiv- 
ing its  deputies,  until  after  the  charter  was  ob- 
tained. It  is  diSicult,  therefore,  to  assign  any 
exact  date  to  the  political  birth  of  the  early  Con- 
necticut towns.  The  growth  of  the  family  may 
be  traced  in  the  steady  increase  in  the  number  of 
deputies  in  the  general  court  itself.  There  were 
seventeen  deputies  in  1649 ;  twenty  in  1650 ; 
twenty-two  in  1651 ;  twenty-five  in  1654 ;  and 
twenty-six  in  1656-57,  this  number  remaining  the 
maximum  until  after  the  union  was  consummated 
under  the  charter.     The  increase  came  from  the 


CONNECTICUT   UNTIL    THE  UNION.  135 

successive  recognition  of  the  new  towns  of  Say- 
brook,  Stratford,  Farmington,  Fairfield,  Norwalk, 
Middletown,  New  London,  Norwich,  and  the  Long 
Island  towns  —  Huntington,  Southampton  and 
East  Hampton  ;  but  there  can  be  no  pretense  at 
accuracy  in  saying  when  each  of  these  towns  was 
first  represented  in  the  general  court.  Town  rec- 
ognition seems  really  to  have  taken  a  somewhat 
different  line,  hinging  on  those  ancient  and  im- 
portant functionaries,  the  constables.  Professor 
H.  B.  Adams  has  said :  "  We  do  not  suppose  that 
this  has  always  been  a  conscious  standard  for  leg- 
islative action  in  the  recognition  of  towns,  or  for 
the  actual  determination  of  town  or  parish  units  ; 
but  we  claim  that  without  a  constable,  or  some 
power  representing  the  corporate  responsibility  of 
the  community  for  the  preservation  of  the  local 
peace,  a  town  would  be  an  impossibility."  His 
evident  hesitation  in  making  an  assertion  which 
would  seem  almost  a  truism  to  the  Connecticut 
historian  is  another  illustration  of  the  unwisdom 
of  confining  the  study  of  the  New  England  town 
system  to  its  phases  in  Massachusetts,  as  if  it  had 
been  a  thing  peculiar  to  that  commonwealth.  In 
fact,  it  can  be  studied  better,  for  many  purposes,  in 
Connecticut  than  in  Massachusetts ;  for  the  town 
in  Connecticut  was  almost  as  free  as  independency 
itself  until  near  the  period  of  the  charter,  while 
in  Massachusetts  it  was  circumscribed  from  the 
beginning  by  commonwealth  power.      Professor 


136  CONNECTICUT. 

Adams  will  find  his  supposition,  doubtful  as  it 
may  be  under  the  comparatively  artificial  Massa- 
chusetts system,  emphatically  confirmed  under 
the  more  natural  Connecticut  system.  We  know, 
for  example,  that  the  Indian  purchase  on  which 
the  town  of  Nor  walk  rests  was  made  in  1640,  and 
that  settlement  began  about  1650  ;  and  we  infer 
from  various  circumstances  that  the  purchase  and 
settlement  of  Middletown  took  place  about  1646- 
47.  But  the  record  of  their  "  incorporation  "  is  no 
more  than  a  vote  of  the  general  court,  September 
11,  1651,  that  "  Mattabeseck  [Middletown]  and 
Norwalke "  should  be  towns  and  should  choose 
constables.  As  the  collection  of  taxes  and  the  an- 
nouncement of  elections  were  among  the  functions 
of  the  constable,  it  seems  probable  that  the  ex- 
press or  tacit  recognition  of  the  town's  constable 
was  in  effect  until  the  charter,  a  recognition  of 
the  town  itself  and  of  its  right  to  choose  deputies. 
The  records  really  show  no  other.  The  difficulty 
of  the  general  court  in  dealing  with  new  towns 
was  about  parallel  with  the  difficulty  of  the  con- 
gress of  the  confederation  in  dealing  with  the 
quasi  State  of  Vermont. 

A  parallel  indication  of  the  growth  of  the  col- 
ony is  to  be  found  in  the  tax-lists.  The  first  dis- 
tinct increase  of  taxable  property  comes  December 
1,  1645,  when  the  general  court  granted  a  "  rate  " 
of  £400,  "to  be  paid  by  the  country."  Of  this 
amount  <£340  was  to  be  paid  by  the  three  origi- 


CONNECTICUT  UNTIL    THE  UNION.  137 

nal  towns  ;  X45  by  Stratford  and  Fairfield  ;  <£15 
by  S  ay  brook ;  and  XIO  each  by  Tunxis  (Farm- 
ington)  and  Southampton,  L.  I.  In  1652  the 
"  rates "  were  still  confined  to  the  -towns  just 
named,  Southampton  being  omitted.  It  is  an  in- 
dication of  the  prosperity  resulting  from  sixteen 
years'  work  that  the  assessed  value  of  the  property 
in  these  seven  towns  was  now  ,£70,000,  as  fol- 
lows: Hartford,  <£  20,000  ;  Windsor,  X14,100  ; 
Wethersfield,  Xll,500  ;  Farmington,  £5,200  ; 
Saybrook,  .£3,600;  Stratford,  X7,000 ;  and  Fair- 
field, £8,900.  In  the  following  year,  three  new 
towns,  Pequot  (New  London),  Mattabesek  (Mid- 
dletown),  and  Norwalk,  are  recognized  in  a  draft 
of  men  for  an  armed  force,  as  well  as  in  the  rates  ; 
and  the  assessed  value  rises  to  £79,700.  In  1661, 
just  before  the  receipt  of  the  charter,  the  assessed 
value  rises  to  £84,137.  The  usual  tax  assessed 
upon  this  amount  was  a  penny  or  a  halfpenny, 
constituting  a  "  rate  "  or  a  "  half  rate." 

Long  Island  had  never  been  more  than  nom- 
inally under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Dutch.  They 
had  planted  a  few  farms  at  its  western  end,  but 
the  rest  of  the  island  was  a  wilderness.  Among 
the  multitude  of  conflicting  and  unintelligible 
grants  made  by  the  council  of  Plymouth  before 
its  dissolution,  was  one  to  the  Earl  of  Stirling, 
covering  Long  Island.  The  grantee  seems  to 
have  claimed  ownership  only,  not  jurisdiction.  In 
practice,  therefore,  when  his  agent  sold  a  piece  of 


138  CONNECTICUT. 

territory,  the  new  owners  became  an  independent 
political  community,  with  some  claims  against 
them,  but  no  direct  control.  The  island  was  thus 
in  much  the  same  position  as  the  Connecticut  ter- 
ritory before  the  first  irruption  of  settlers,  and 
offered  much  the  same  attractions  as  a  place  of 
refuge  for  persons  or  communities  who  had  found 
the  connection  between  church  and  state  grievous. 
A  company  from  Lynn,  Mass.,  bought  the  town- 
ship of  Southampton  from  Stirling's  agent,  April 
17,  1640.  There  were  at  first  but  sixteen  persons 
in  the  company,  Abraham  Pierson  being  their 
minister.  This  was  the  church  which,  first  re- 
moving to  Branford  in  1644,  when  Southampton 
became  a  Connecticut  town,  finally  settled  at 
Newark,  N.  J.  Easthampton  was  settled  about 
1648,  by  another  Lynn  party,  and  was  received 
as  a  Connecticut  town,  November  7, 1649.  The 
town  of  Huntington,  though  part  of  it  was  bought 
from  the  Indians  by  Governor  Eaton,  of  New 
Haven,  in  1646,  really  dates  from  about  1653. 
May  17,  1660,  it  was  received  as  a  Connecticut 
town.  There  were  thus  three  Connecticut  towns 
on  Long  Island,  in  addition  to  Southold,  the  New 
Haven  township.  Between  these  and  the  really 
Dutch  settlements  at  the  western  end  of  the  is- 
land, there  were  English  settlements  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Hempstead;  but  these  acknowledged 
a  much  closer  dependence  on  the  Dutch  authori. 
ties. 


CONNECTICUT   UNTIL  THE   UNION.  139 

Hardly  any  of  the  expansion  of  Connecticut, 
prior  to  the  grant  of  the  charter  which  gave  a  legal 
basis  to  its  claims,  was  dUe  to  accident.  In  almost 
all  of  it  we  can  see  very  clearly  a  provident  de- 
termination on  the  part  of  the  people  to  give  their 
commonwealth  respectable  limits,  and  to  turn  to 
account  every  favoring  circumstance  in  that  direc- 
tion. Hardly  was  the  Pequot  war  under  way 
■when  the  general  court  resolved  to  send  thirty 
men  to  occupy  "  the  Pequoitt  Countrey  &  River 
in  place  convenient  to  maynteine  our  right  that 
God  by  Conquest  hath  given  us."  And  from  this 
moment  Connecticut  maintained  her  right  by  con- 
quest to  the  whole  of  the  present  eastern  part  of 
the  State  with  a  vigor  which  was  in  itself  strong 
promise  of  success.  One  secret  of  the  .common- 
wealth's success,  in  this  as  in  the  Saybrook  and 
other  cases,  was  the  policy  which  it  followed  with 
adverse  claimants,  a  policy  which  the  politico-reli- 
gious constitution  of  New  Haven  prevented  it  from 
imitating.  Instead  of  engaging  in  a  struggle  with 
a  rival,  the  Connecticut  democracy  always  en- 
deavored to  adopt  him,  to  make  its  interests  his, 
and  so  to  secure  even  a  better  title  out  of  conflict. 
In  the  case  of  the  Pequot  country,  it  was  John 
Winthrop,  Jr.,  the  former  agent  of  the  Saybrook 
proprietors,  who  developed  an  inchoate  rivalry 
with  the  colony  for  possession  of  the  coveted  terri- 
tory ;  and  Connecticut's  policy,  carefully  applied, 
not  only   strengthened   her  title   to  the   Pequot 


140  CONNECTICUT. 

country,  but  gave  her  one  of  the  best  of  her  long 
line  of  excellent  governors,  and  was  in  the  end  one 
of  the  chief  means  of  obtaining  her  long  desired 
charter.  Winthrop's  attention  had  been  turned 
to  the  Pequot  country.  Fisher's  Island,  "against 
the  mouth  of  the  Pequot  River,"  was  granted  to 
him  by  the  Massachusetts  general  court,  October 
7, 1640,  with  a  reservation  of  the  possibly  superior 
title  of  Connecticut  or  New  Haven  ;  and  Connecti- 
cut, instead  of  taking  any  exceptions  to  the  grant, 
promptly  confirmed  it.  In  1644  Massachusetts 
gave  Winthrop  authority  to  "  make  a  plantation 
in  the  Pequot  country."  He  went  to  the  place  in 
the  following  spring,  and  in  the  autumn  of  1646 
had  gathered  a  few  families  there,  and  was  begin- 
ning to  put  up  houses.  The  claims  of  Massachu- 
setts were  grounded  on  the  fact  that  her  troops  had 
taken  part  in  the  conquest  of  the  Pequots  ;  and 
the  case  was  decided  against  her  by  the  New  Eng- 
land commissioners  in  July,  1647.  Connecticut  at 
once  gave  Winthrop  a  commission,  September  9, 
1647,  to  execute  justice  in  his  town  "according  to 
our  laws  and  the  rule  of  righteousness."  May  17, 
1649,  the  court  established  the  boundaries  of  the 
new  town  and  named  its  magistrates.  One  of 
these  two  dates,  and  most  probably  the  former,  is 
to  be  taken  as  the  town's  entrance  to  the  list  of 
Connecticut  towns.  On  the  latter  date,  the  court 
suggested  the  name  "  Fair  Haven,"  but  the  people 
preferred  that  of  New  London. 


CONNECTICUT   UNTIL   THE   UNION.  141 

The  last  of  the  Connecticut  towns  before  the 
charter  was  Norwich,  an  offshoot  of  Saybrook. 
Its  settlement  was  approved,  under  the  name  of 
"  Mohegan,"  by  the  general  court  in  1659  ;  and  it 
•was  summoned,  October  3,  1661,  under  the  name 
of  "  Norridge,"  to  send  representatives. 

The  divergence  between  the  Connecticut  colony 
and  its  sister  and  rival  of  New  Haven  had  become 
marked  long  before  Monk  began  his  march  for 
London.  The  attempt  has  been  made  in  this 
chapter  to  state  some  of  the  elements  of  strength 
of  Connecticut.  It  had  become  a  strong,  well- 
balanced  political  unit,  with  a  clear  notion  of  a 
territorial  goal  to  be  striven  for,  and  of  the  line  of 
policy  to  be  pursued  in  striving  for  it.  Its  democ- 
racy gave  every  man  a  personal  interest  in  the  main- 
tenance of  the  colony's  claims  ;  and  the  results 
were  another  proof  that  "  everybody  knows  more 
than  anybody."  Its  towns  were  as  free  as  towns 
could  well  be ;  the  right  of  suffrage  was  as  nearly 
as  possible  universal ;  it  can  hardly  be  said  that 
there  were  any  dissatisfied  elements  to  be  placated, 
or  else  to  fester  in  the  vitals  of  the  commonwealth  ; 
and  the  steady  bias  of  the  commonwealth  toward 
civil  and  religious  freedom  had  enabled  it  to  find 
elements  of  increased  strength  in  what  might  have 
been  elements  of  intestine  weakness.  For  twenty 
years  or  more,  the  "  loving  brethren  "  of  Connec- 
ticut and  New  Haven  lived  on  in  entire  satisfac- 
tion with  one  another's  corporate  existence.     The 


142  CONNECTICUT. 

time  had  then  come  when  the  growing  common- 
wealth found  that  the  separate  existence  o\  New 
Haven  was  a  complete  obstacle  to  the  natural 
course  of  development  of  Connecticut.  The  com- 
parative weakness  of  New  Haven  will  come  out  in 
the  narrative  of  the  events  which  led  to  the  union  ; 
but  it  is  fair  to  say  in  advance  that  one  of  the  most 
effective  of  these  weakening  elements  in  New 
Haven  was  the  apparent  agreement  of  a  part  oi 
her  people  with  Connecticut  rather  than  with  their 
own  colony.  Freedom  was  more  attractive  in  the 
long  run  than  restriction. 


CHAPTER  X. 

THE  TWO  COLONIES   UNTIL    THE  UNION. 

The  organization  in  which  the  idea  of  the 
American  Union  first  cropped  out,  to  exist  a  while 
and  then  to  die  away  almost  unnoticed,  was  the 
New  England  union  of  1643.  As  Massachusetts 
was  the  most  distinguished  and  influential  mem- 
ber of  this  confederation,  the  full  account  of  its 
origin  and  history  should  in  fairness  be  reserved 
to  Massachusetts  historians.  It  will  not  be  im- 
proper to  say  here  that  such  a  union  had  been  pro- 
posed by  Connecticut  in  1637,  just  after  the  settle- 
ment ;  but  Massachusetts  received  the  proposal 
with  a  demand  that  her  right  to  Agawam  (Spring- 
field) and  to  free  navigation  of  the  Connecticut 
should  be  recognized.  Connecticut's  answer  was 
so  "  harsh  "  that  the  further  consideration  of  the 
matter  lapsed  for  some  years.  It  soon  turned  out 
that  Massachusetts  had  right  on  her  side,  so  far, 
at  least,  as  the  jurisdiction  over  Springfield  was 
concerned  ;  and  the  extreme  confusion  of  English 
affairs,  through  the  struggle  between  king  and 
parliament,  was  an  inducement  to  the  New  Eng- 
land  colonies  to  suspend  all  minor  differences, 


144  CONNECTICUT. 

and  combine  for  common  defense  against  the  In- 
dians and  the  Dutch.  In  1643  the  union  was 
formed,  consisting  of  Massachusetts,  Plymouth, 
Connecticut,  and  New  Haven.  Connecticut  had 
not  yet  advanced  far  enough  on  the  road  to  a  clear 
comprehension  of  her  future  to  make  any  objec- 
tions to  New  Haven's  separate  existence  ;  but  New 
Haven's  hurry  to  organize  a  systematic  govern- 
ment and  take  part  in  the  confederation  seems  to 
show  at  least  a  dawning  suspicion  of  a  possible 
conflict  between  her  own  interests  and  those  of 
her  neighbor.  There  was  not  yet  any  consider- 
able superiority  of  one  colony  over  the  other :  their 
respective  populations  ai-e  estimated  at  3,000  for 
Connecticut  and  2,500  for  New  Haven. 

The  leading  reason  for  the  formation  of  the 
union  was  probably  the  inability  of  the  home  gov- 
ernment, during  the  confusion  of  the  civil  war,  to 
afford  protection  to  the  New-England ers  against 
the  claims  of  the  Dutch  colony  of  New  Nether- 
land.  With  the  most  amicable  feelings  on  both 
sides,  the  Dutch  colony,  thrust  in  between  English 
colonies  to  the  south  and  to  the  north  of  it,  must 
have  been  pressed  more  hardly  as  the  English  col- 
onies grew,  until  at  last  the  question  of  the  an- 
nexation or  independent  existence  of  New  Nether- 
land  must  have  called  imperatively  for  settlement. 
But  the  feelings  on  neither  side  were  really  ami- 
cable. The  New  England  settler  was  an  English- 
man ;    and  the  Englishman  of  that  time  had  a 


THE    TWO   COLONIES    UNTIL   THE    UNION.    145 

chronic  disposition  to  regard  the  Dutchman  as  a 
commercial  rival,  and  an  habitual  intruder  into 
places  where  he  had  no  good  excuse  for  being.  As 
the  New  England  Englishmen  found  themselves 
forced  into  nearer  relations  with  the  New  Nether- 
land  Dutch,  the  two  parties  met  with  many  of  the 
old  animosities  still  unhealed.  The  grant  to  the 
New  Netherland  company  by  the  States  General 
of  Holland,  October  11,  1614,  had  covered  all  the 
territory  "  between  New  France  and  Virginia,  the 
sea-coasts  of  which  lie  between  the  fortieth  and 
forty-fifth  degrees  of  latitude,"  that  is,  from  about 
the  present  location  of  Philadelphia  to  the  Bay  of 
Fundy.  This  nominal  jurisdiction  was  really  con- 
firmed by  the  States  General  to  the  Dutch  West 
India  Company  in  1621  for  twenty-four  years ;  but 
in  course  of  time  the  growth  of  English  settlement 
compelled  the  Dutch  to  modify  this  nominal  claim, 
and  to  rely  on  the  discoveries  of  Hudson  to  support 
their  claims  to  the  district  between  the  thirty- 
eighth  and  forty-second  degrees  of  latitude,  or  from 
about  the  mouth  of  the  Potomac  to  the  mouth  of 
the  Connecticut.  As  the  greatest  concession  to 
the  English,  based  on  the  English  charters  then  in 
existence,  they  claimed  the  coast  from  Cape  May 
to  the  mouth  of  the  Connecticut,  from  latitude  39° 
to  latitude  41°.  In  answer  to  all  these  official 
and  unofficial  claims,  the  English  finally  relied  on 
the  voyages  of  the  Cabots  as  entitling  them  to  the 
whole  coast,  including  the  parts  explored  by  Hud- 
10 


146  CONNECTICUT. 

son,  which  they  declined  to  take  as  real  discov- 
eries. But  at  first,  with  the  possible  expedition  of 
one  Captain  Argal,  of  Virginia,  about  1614,  who 
is  said  to  have  compelled  "the  pretended  Dutch 
governor  "  at  the  mouth  of  the  Hudson  to  submit 
to  the  king  of  England  and  promise  tribute,  the 
English  for  many  years  quietly  acquiesced  in  the 
Dutch  settlement.  Their  objection  was  to  the  ex- 
tent, not  to  the  fact,  of  the  Dutch  colony. 

The  Delaware  company,  including  nearly  all 
the  leading  men  of  New  Haven,  had  been  formed 
for  colonization  purposes.  Following  the  New 
Haven  policy  of  purchase,  the  New  Haven  settlers 
had  sent  an  agent  in  1640,  who  bought  from  the 
natives  a  tract  of  land  on  both  sides  of  the  Dela- 
ware River.  In  the  following  year  the  New  Haven 
civil  authority  asserted  its  jurisdiction  over  the 
purchased  territory  ;  and  a  company  was  sent  out 
which  settled  on  the  west  shore  of  the  Delaware, 
near  what  is  now  known  as  Salem  Creek.  This 
was  under  the  governorship  of  Kieft ;  and  Wil- 
liam the  Testy  sent  two  ships  in  1642  with  a  de- 
tachment of  troops,  who  attacked  the  settlement, 
burned  its  houses  and  made  the  settlers  prisoners. 
Remonstrance  for  this  step  was  almost  the  first 
business  of  the  commissioners  of  the  New  Eng- 
land union ;  but  they  got  no  satisfaction  from 
Kieft.  In  1649  Governor  Eaton  made  another 
appeal  to  the  commissioners  for  help  ;  but  the 
commissioners  were  not  disposed  to  enter  upon  a 


THE   TWO   COLONIES    UNTIL    THE    UNION.     147 

quarrel  at  the  time.  They  would  refuse  to  assist 
any  persons  from  any  other  colony  who  should 
attempt  to  settle  the  Delaware  purchase  without 
the  consent  of  New  Haven  ;  but  they  would  not 
maintain  the  claims  of  New  Haven  against  the 
Dutch  by  force.  The  failure  of  the  scheme  was 
a  blow  from  which  independent  New  Haven  never 
recovered.  Her  richest  men  had  ventured  their 
all  and  lost  it,  and  the  colony  was  in  sore  straits 
for  some  years. 

The  Dutch  West  India  Company  perceived 
clearly  the  growing  strength  of  the  English  colo- 
nies. In  reply  to  the  appeal  of  the  new  Dutch 
governor,  Stuyvesant,  for  authority  to  repel  force 
by  force,  and  for  material  aid,  the  home  corpora- 
tion declined  to  think  of  war,  which,  they  said, 
"  cannot  in  any  event  be  to  our  advantage :  the 
New  England  people  are  too  powerful  for  us." 
Thus  left  in  the  lurch  by  his  superiors,  Stuyve- 
sant could  do  no  more  than  take  the  best  terms 
obtainable  ;  and  it  is  creditable  to  him  that  he 
kept  his  colony  in  existence  more  than  ten  years 
longer.  His  first  step  was  to  go  to  Hartford,  to 
meet  the  New  England  commissioners  in  negotia- 
tion, arriving  there  September  11,  1650.  He  took 
high  ground  from  the  beginning.  He  insisted  on 
having  the  negotiations  conducted  in  writing; 
and,  in  his  first  letter,  he  not  only  protested 
against  the  presence  of  the  English  in  Connecti- 
cut as  an  infringement  on  the  undoubted  rights  of 


148  CONNECTICUT. 

the  Dutch,  but  dated  the  letter  at  "  New  Nether- 
land,"  thus  calmly  assuming  every  point  in  dis- 
pute. The  commissioners  were  not  to  be  caught. 
They  refused  to  receive  the  letter  and  thus  ac- 
knowledge that  Hartford  was  within  the  Dutch 
territory.  He  finally  yielded  the  point,  and  a 
long  correspondence  resulted  in  an  agreement  to 
submit  all  the  questions  between  Dutch  and  Eng- 
lish to  four  arbitrators,  two  to  be  named  by  the 
governor,  and  two  by  the  commissioners.  Stuy- 
vesant  named  Englishmen  as  his  agents,  and  the 
four  agreed  upon  a  settlement  of  the  boundary 
matter,  ignoring  all  other  points  in  dispute  as  hav- 
ing occurred  under  the  administration  of  Kieft. 
It  was  agreed  that  the  Dutch  were  to  retain  their 
lands  in  Hartford  ;  that  the  boundary  line  be- 
tween the  two  peoples  on  the  mainland  was  not 
to  come  within  ten  miles  of  the  Hudson  River,  but 
was  to  be  left  undecided  for  the  present,  except 
the  first  twenty  miles  from  the  Sound,  which  was 
to  begin  on  the  west  side  of  Greenwich  Bay,  be- 
tween Stamford  and  Manhattan,  running  thence 
twenty  miles  north  ;  and  that  Long  Island  should 
be  divided  by  a  corresponding  line  across  it,  "  from 
the  westernmost  part  of  Oyster  Bay  "  to  the  sea. 
The  English  thus  got  the  greater  part  of  Long 
Island,  a  recognition  of  the  rightfulness  of  their 
presence  in  the  Connecticut  territory,  and  at  least 
the  initial  twenty  miles  of  a  boundary  line  which 
must,  in  the  nature  of  things,  be  prolonged  in 


THE   TWO   COLONIES    UNTIL    THE    UNION.     149 

much  the  same  direction,  and  which  in  fact  has 
pretty  closely  governed  subsequent  boundary  lines 
on  that  side  of  Connecticut.  If  these  seem  hard 
terms  for  the  Dutch,  and  indicative  of  treachery 
on  the  part  of  their  two  English  agents,  it  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that,  by  the  terms  of  his  instruc- 
tions  from  his  principals,  Stuyvesant  had  to  take 
the  best  terms  he  could  get.  The  treaty  of  Hart- 
ford was  dated  September  19,  1650. 

Peter  Stuyvesant  was  probably  not  satisfied 
with  the  treaty,  even  though  he  was  compelled  to 
accept  it.  At  all  events,  he  soon  furnished  fresh 
occasion  for  negotiation.  In  the  spring  of  1651, 
the  New  Haven  people  fitted  out  another  vessel 
for  their  Delaware  Bay  settlement.  It  touched 
at  New  Amsterdam,  and  its  appearance  put  the 
last  of  the  Dutch  governors  into  a  terrible  rage. 
He  arrested  officers  and  passengers,  and  only  re- 
leased them  with  sounding  threats  of  the  fate  of 
any  future  New  Haven  expedition  to  the  Dela- 
ware, on  their  promise  to  return  at  once  to  New 
Haven.  Again  the  New  Haven  adventurers  ap- 
pealed to  the  New  England  commissioners,  and 
those  officials  this  time  espoused  their  cause. 
They  wrote  to  Stuyvesant,  charging  him  with  a 
breach  of  the  treaty,  though  it  is  not  easy  to  see 
on  what  grounds ;  and  a  resolution  was  passed^ 
promising  protection  to  any  Delaware  settlement 
against  all  comers,  provided  it  should  number  a 
hundred  and  fifty  men.  Still  there  was  no  colli- 
sion. 


150  CONNECTICUT. 

In  the  following  year,  vague  rumors  of  an  im- 
pending Dutch  and  Indian  war  nearly  brought 
about  the  long  expected  struggle.  As  the  New 
England  colonies  came  nearer  to  the  Dutch,  the 
resulting  complications  with  the  Indians  increased. 
The  two  Connecticut  colonies,  as  has  been  said, 
had  no  difficulties  with  their  own  Indians  after 
the  downfall  of  the  Pequots.  Their  main  difficul- 
ties arose  in  the  southwestern  corner  of  the  present 
State,  in  the  district  where  now  is  the  town  of 
Greenwich.  The  district  had  been  bought  by  its 
first  owner,  Robert  Feake,  as  a  part  of  the  New 
Haven  jurisdiction ;  but  the  Dutch  had  seduced 
the  first  inhabitants,  under  Captain  Patrick,  who 
had  a  Dutch  wife,  to  come  under  their  jurisdiction 
and  accept  a  place  as  a  Dutch  town.  It  had  been 
agreed  at  Hartford  that  Greenwich  should  be 
restored  to  New  Haven  ;  but  the  usual  vices  of  a 
border  settlement  seem  to  have  prevailed  here. 
Later,  in  1656,  the  deputies  of  Stamford  at  New 
Haven  complained  bitterly  of  the  conduct  of  the 
people  of  Greenwich,  of  "  their  disorderly  walke- 
ing  among  themselues,  admitting  of  drunkenness 
both  amonge  the  English  and  Indians,  whereby 
they  are  apt  to  doe  mischeife  both  to  themselues 
and  others  :  they  receive  disorderly  children  or 
seruants  who  fly  from  their  parrents  or  masters 
lawfull  correction  ;  they  marry  persons  in  a  dis- 
orderly way,  beside  other  miscariages."  It  was  in 
this  Alsatia  that  the  troubles  seem  to  have  begun 


THE  TWO  COLONIES   UNTIL    THE   UNION.    151 

which  broke  out  first  in  the  war  of  1643  between 
the  Dutch  and  Indians,  when  the  Dutch  called  in 
Captain  Underbill,  of  Stamford,  as  their  comman- 
der-in-chief, and  in  the  course  of  which  Mrs. 
Hutchinson,  who  had  found  refuge  here  from  her 
Massachusetts  enemies,  was  done  to  death  by  the 
Indians.  Other  Indian  outrages  took  place  at  in- 
tervals in  the  neighborhood.  A  Stamford  Indian, 
found  guilty  of  one  of  the  most  atrocious  of  these, 
was  taken  to  New  Haven  and  executed  by  decapi- 
tation. "  He  sat  erect  and  motionless,"  says  the 
New  Haven  record,  "  until  his  head  was  severed 
from  his  body."  There  was  enough  trouble  with 
the  Indians  in  this  quarter  to  make  it  a  source  of 
universal  alarm  when,  in  the  spring  of  1652,  it 
was  rumored  that  Stuyvesant  had  induced  all  the 
Indians  to  unite  against  the  English,  and  had  sup- 
plied them  with  ammunition.  The  evidence  of 
the  existence  of  the  plot  was  in  the  affidavits  of  a 
number  of  the  Indians  themselves,  a  class  of  evi- 
dence which  ought  of  itself  to  have  been  Stuyve- 
sant's  complete  vindication.  A  majority  of  the 
commissioners,  however,  believed  it,  and  based 
upon  it  an  ultimatum  to  Stuyvesant.  The  accu- 
sation naturally  made  Stuyvesant  very  indignant, 
and  he  demanded  a  committee  of  investigation. 
The  commissioners  sent  three  distinguished  New- 
Englanders  to  New  Amsterdam  to  act  as  such 
committee.  The  tone  of  their  letters  was  not  con- 
ciliatory, or  calculated  to  inspire  the  governor  with 


152  CONNECTICUT. 

confidence  in  his  judges  ;  and  he  refused  to  answer 
any  questions  except  such  as  should  be  approved 
by  persons  whom  he  should  select.  His  reason 
doubtless  was  his  diffidence  of  his  familiarity  with 
the  language  in  which  the  examination  was  to  be 
conducted.  But,  as  the  persons  whom  he  selected 
had  "  been  complained  of  for  misdemeanors  at 
Hartford,  and  one  of  them  had  been  laid  under 
bonds  for  his  crimes,"  the  committee  took  the 
whole  proceeding  as  a  fresh  affront,  and  judges 
and  accused  pai-ted  in  still  higher  exasperation 
with  one  another.  On  the  report  of  the  commit- 
tee, whose  members  had  obtained  new  evidence  of 
Stuyvesant's  duplicity  and  treachery  on  their  way 
home,  all  the  commissioners  except  those  of  Massa- 
chusetts declared  for  war.  Massachusetts  referred 
the  question  to  her  ministers,  who  declared  that, 
while  they  believed  the  evidence  against  the  Dutch 
governor,  it  was  not  sufficient  to  justify  a  war  be- 
fore the  judgment  of  the  rest  of  the  world ;  and 
that  the  colonies  should  stand  on  the  defensive, 
without  declaring  war.  One  of  their  number, 
who  claimed  to  write  on  behalf  of  "  many  pensive 
hearts,"  took  more  warlike  ground,  and  threatened 
the  commissioners  with  the  curse  of  the  angel  of 
the  Lord  against  Meroz  unless  they  declared  war 
upon  Stuyvesant.  But  the  resolution  of  the  ma- 
jority was  more  satisfactory  to  the  Massachusetts 
general  court,  and  it  steadfastly  refused  to  take 
part  in  an  offensive  war.     The  whole  controversy 


THE   TWO   COLONIES    UNTIL   THE    UNION.    153 

is  particularly  interesting  for  the  reason  that  it 
was  the  first  in  our  history  which  shows  the  ten- 
dency which  has  finally  controlled  American  con- 
stitutional law.  All  the  parties  acknowledged  the 
binding  character  of  the  articles  of  union  ;  and 
the  controversy  went  mainly  to  the  construction 
of  them,  to  the  interpretation  of  the  powers  of  the 
commissioners  under  them.  The  occasion  was 
not,  as  it  would  have  been  in  England,  a  dispute 
as  to  what  the  governing  body  had  better  do,  but 
a  dispute  as  to  what  the  governing  body  had  a 
right  to  do,  thus  showing  that  in  the  latter  case 
there  was  behind  the  nominally  governing  body 
a  recognized  popular  sovereignty  superior  to  it. 
This  debate  of  1652  might  very  well  be  taken  as 
the  beginning  of  constitutional  law,  in  the  peculiar 
phase  of  the  term  which  obtains  in  the  United 
States  and  other  countries  having  a  written  con- 
stitution. 

The  unusual  bitterness  of  the  controversy  had 
come  largely,  not  from  academic  differences  as  to 
the  construction  of  the  articles,  but  from  the  gen- 
eral suspicion  that  the  Bay  colony  was  moved  by 
the  question  of  the  tolls  at  the  mouth  of  the  Con- 
necticut River,  ali*eady  referred  to,  and  by  a  desire 
to  convince  the  associate  colonies  that  Massachu- 
setts was  their  real  head.  Some  of  the  western 
towns  of  Connecticut  even  made  ready  for  war  on 
their  own  account ;  and  it  was  when  all  prospect 
of  war,  either  by  colonial  or  home  power,  had  van- 


154  CONNECTICUT. 

ished,  that  Ludlow  in  disgust  left  the  colony  which 
he  had  helped  to  plant,  and  went  to  Virginia.  In- 
deed, the  New  England  confederation  was  in  a 
state  of  extreme  confusion,  and  almost  in  articulo 
mortis.  The  commissioners  had  declared  war ; 
Massachusetts  had  really  introduced  the  first  in- 
stance of  nullification ;  and  the  other  colonies 
found  it  equally  difficult  to  make  war,  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  commissioners,  without  Massachusetts, 
or  to  keep  the  peace  and  satisfy  their  own  people. 
Connecticut  and  New  Haven  kept  a  small  cruiser 
in  commission.  New  Haven  decided  guardedly 
that  it  would  not  do  to  begin  war  under  present 
circumstances  ;  and  it  was  not  until  April,  1654, 
that  the  Hartford  general  court  formally  "  se- 
questered "  the  Dutch  fort  of  Good  Hope,  and 
banished  the  Dutch  ensign  from  Connecticut  soil. 
But  both  had  great  difficulty  in  restraining  their 
people,  and  a  small  insurrection  had  to  be  quelled 
in  Stamford. 

The  relations  between  England  and  Holland 
had  not  been  improved  by  the  establishment  of 
the  English  commonwealth.  At  the  execution  of 
Charles  I.,  the  Dutch  States  General  had  waited 
in  a  body  on  his  son,  recognized  him  as  Charles 
II.,  and  refused  even  a  reception  to  the  English 
envoys.  Cromwell's  successful  battle  of  Dunbar, 
in  September,  1650,  and  his  still  more  successful 
battle  of  Worcester  just  a  year  later,  brought  the 
Dutch  to  their  senses,  and  they  asked  an  alliance 


TEE  TWO  COLONIES   UNTIL   THE   UNION.    155 

with,  the  Commonwealth.  The  English  parlia- 
mentary leaders,  however,  wished  to  make  a  suc- 
cessful navy  the  counterbalance  to  their  too  suc- 
cessful army.  They  passed  the  Navigation  Act 
of  1651,  which  cut  their  rivals  out  of  the  carrying 
trade.  There  was  an  "  accidental  "  collision  be- 
tween the  two  fleets  in  May,  1652,  when  Blake 
called  upon  Van  Tromp  to  lower  his  flag,  and  Van 
Tromp  answered  with  a  broadside.  Again,  in  the 
autumn,  Blake  and  De  Ruyter  met  in  the  Channel 
in  an  indecisive  conflict ;  and  in  November  Van 
Tromp  drove  Blake  into  the  Thames,  and  sailed 
the  Channel  with  a  broom  at  his  masthead.  A 
few  months  later,  Blake,  issuing  forth  again  into 
the  Channel  with  a  horsewhip  at  his  masthead, 
drove  Van  Tromp  in  his  turn  into  harbor. 

While  the  two  great  marine  monsters  were  thus 
rolling  heavily  into  collision,  it  was  but  natural 
that  the  little  fish  across  the  Atlantic  should  take 
a  keen  personal  interest  in  the  matter.  Every 
accidental  victoi-y  of  Blake  was  to  them  an  addi- 
tional hope  of  a  parliamentary  fleet,  which  should 
deal  out  justice  to  the  wicked  Dutch  governor  and 
his  Manhattan  associates.  New  Haven  was  espe- 
cially elate,  for  the  relations  of  her  leading  men 
with  Cromwell  had  always  been  particularly  close. 
It  was  the  battle  of  Naseby  which  had  brought 
about  that  almost  solitary  touch  of  romance  in 
Connecticut  history,  the  "  phantom  ship  "  of  New 
Haven.     The  New  Haven   people,   feeling   more 


156  CONNECTICUT. 

reason  for  relying  on  the  rising  fortunes  of  the 
Cromwell  interest,  equipped  a  ship  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  tons,  freighted  her,  and  sent  her  to  Eng- 
land with  an  agent  to  endeavor  to  procure  a  charter 
from  the  new  power  there.  It  was  in  January, 
1647,  that  she  sailed,  and  the  ice  in  the  harbor 
had  to  be  cut  in  order  to  open  the  way  for  her. 
Nothing  more  was  ever  known  of  her  :  the  seventy 
souls  on  board  had  gone  to  their  account,  and  the 
material  loss  was  so  severe  a  strain  on  the  colony 
that  its  leaders  began  to  cast  about  for  a  new 
location,  in  Ireland,  Jamaica,  or  elsewhere,  —  the 
Jamaica  proposition  being  Cromwell's  own.  In 
June,  1649,  so  the  story  goes,  the  long-lost  ship 
was  seen  beating  up  the  harbor  towards  New 
Haven.  As  the  townspeople  gathered  to  watch 
her,  at  first  incredulous,  then  joyful,  then  hesitat- 
ing and  awe-stricken,  it  was  seen  that  there  was 
but  one  man  on  her  deck ;  that  he  was  leaning  on 
his  sword,  and  looked  sadly  on  the  gathered  mul- 
titude. As  she  drew  nearer,  he  pointed  once  to 
the  sea,  and  then  New  Haven's  phantom  ship 
vanished  from  sight. 

In  June,  1653,  the  joyful  news  was  received 
that  Cromwell  had  taken  sides  with  the  majority 
of  the  commissioners,  and  had  enjoined  Massachu- 
setts to  desist  from  her  opposition  ;  and  that  a 
fleet  of  commonwealth  ships  was  at  Boston,  ready 
to  help  the  New  England  union  to  remove  the 
Dutch  flag  from  Manhattan.     The  Massachusetts 


THE   TWO   COLONIES    UNTIL   THE    UNION.    157 

general  court  was  angry,  but  not  angry  enough 
to  resist  openly.  It  still  refused  to  raise  troops 
for  the  war,  but  consented  to  allow  the  parliamen- 
tary commissioners  to  raise  men  in  Massachusetts, 
if  they  could.  Arrangements  for  an  expedition  of 
eight  hundred  men,  to  attack  New  Netherland, 
were  iu  progress,  when  they  were  stopped  by  the 
news  of  peace  between  England  and  Holland, 
which  had  been  concluded  April  5,  1654.  Stuyve- 
sant  thus  obtained  ajiother  lease  of  life. 

There  was  at  first  a  strong  disposition  in  Con- 
necticut and  New  Haven  to  allow  the  union  to 
lapse  because  of  what  they  regarded  as  the  perfi- 
dious conduct  of  Massachusetts.  New  Haven  had 
even  formally  voted  not  to  choose  commissioners. 
But  Massachusetts  urged  a  continuance  of  the 
union  so  feelingly  that  commissioners  were  chosen 
as  usual,  and  their  meeting  proved  to  be  an  ex- 
ceedingly amicable  one.  From  that  time  the 
union  went  on  through  the  rest  of  its  brief  exist- 
ence with  little  apparent  friction.  But  it  is  as 
evident  as  anything  can  be  that  the  heart  had 
been  taken  out  of  it  by  the  course  of  Massachu- 
setts in  1652.  Nullification  is  nullification,  whether 
the  moving  cause  be  worthy  or  unworthy ;  and 
after  Massachusetts  had  once  successfully  nullified 
the  plain  provisions  of  the  articles,  her  confeder- 
ates could  never  again  feel  that  perfect  confidence 
in  her  future  action  which  is  essential  to  the  use- 
fulness and  even  the  existence  of  a  league  govern- 


158  CONNECTICUT. 

ment.  A  stronger  tendency  is  evident  every  year 
to  reduce  the  functions  of  the  commissioners  to 
matters  of  administrative  routine,  while  the  sev- 
eral colonies  diverge  more  and  more  strongly  in 
the  protection  of  their  own  interests  and  in  their 
peculiar  development. 

For  six  years  after  the  peace  between  England 
and  Holland,  the  two  Connecticut  colonies  went  on 
in  their  course  of  development  with  few  events  of 
exceptional  interest.  Successive  deaths  were  thin- 
ning out  the  ranks  of  the  original  settlers.  Hooker 
died  in  1647.  John  Haynes,  the  first  governor  of 
Connecticut,  died  in  1654,  and  his  family  seems  to 
have  become  extinct  soon  after.  Henry  Wolcott, 
one  of  the  most  influential  leaders  of  the  same 
colony,  died  in  1655.  He  was  more  fortunate  in 
his  descendants  :  there  was  hardly  a  time  for  the 
next  two  centuries  when  a  Wolcott  was  not  in 
some  post  of  trust  and  honor  in  the  service  of  the 
Commonwealth.  In  1657  and  1658  died  Edward 
Hopkins  of  Connecticut,  and  Theophilus  Eaton  of 
New  Haven.  Hopkins  had  been  governor  of  his 
colony  in  alternate  years  from  1640  until  1654, 
Haynes  being  chosen  in  the  other  years.  He  had 
married  the  sister  of  David  Yale,  a  Boston  mer- 
chant ;  and  his  bequest  to  the  towns  of  Hartford 
and  New  Haven  founded  the  Hopkins  grammar 
schools  in  those  cities,  as  Elihu  Yale's  beneficence 
long  afterward  gave  the  impetus  to  the  college 
which  bears  his   name.     Eaton  had  beep  chosen 


THE  TWO  COLONIES   UNTIh  THE   UNION.    159 

governor  of  New  Haven  every  year  from  the 
settlement  in  1638  until  his  death.  His  loss  was 
almost  irreparable  to  his  colony,  coming  as  it  did 
just  before  the  crisis  in  her  history.  It  is  impos- 
sible here  to  do  justice  to  his  public  services  and 
his  private  worth.  But  there  are  some  indications 
that  in  these  respects  he  had  surmounted  obstacles 
which  the  official  records  have  not  fully  detailed. 
His  biographers  claim  that  his  numerous  family 
*'was  under  the  most  perfect  government."  If 
the  facts  found  by  the  church  trial  of  1644,  in 
which  Mrs.  Eaton  (the  governor's  second  wife) 
was  censured,  are  to  be  taken  as  proved,  Eaton's 
hohie  life  must  have  been  a  constant  thorn  in  the 
flesh.  Mrs.  Eaton  seems  to  have  been  in  the 
habit  of  venting  a  very  ugly  temper  in  the  most 
outrageous  language  to  the  whole  family,  from  her 
husband  down  to  *'  Anthony  the  neager."  She 
slapped  the  face  of  "  old  Mrs.  Eaton,"  while  the 
family  were  at  dinner,  until  the  governor  was  com- 
pelled to  hold  her  hands  ;  she  pinched  Mary,  the 
governor's  daughter  by  his  first  marriage,  until 
she  was  black  and  blue,  and  "  knocked  her  head 
against  the  dresser,  which  made  her  nose  bleed 
much  ;  "  she  slandered  Mary,  falsely  impeaching 
her  character  ;  and  in  all  points  she  seems  to  have 
been  the  type  of  the  vulgar  notion  of  a  step- 
mother. She,  the  wife  of  one  of  the  "  seven  pil- 
lars," put  the  church  to  shame  by  becoming  a 
pronounced  Anabaptist,  walking  out  from  the  com- 


160  eONNECTICUT. 

munion  service,  arguing  with  Mr.  Davenport  from 
her  seat  in  the  audience,  and  expressing  loud  and 
exasperating  approbation  when  he  used  the  famil- 
iar formula,  "  On  this  point  I  will  be  brief."  There 
seems  to  have  been  a  good  deal  of  human  nature 
under  the  surface,  even  in  New  Haven. 

Davenport  was  still  in  New  Haven :  it  was  not 
until  1668,  after  the  union  of  the  two  colonies  had 
been  accomplished,  that  he  removed  to  Boston. 
In  both  Connecticut  and  New  Haven,  the  healthy 
condition  of  the  body  politic  was  shown  by  the 
fact  that  new  men  were  coming  up  prepared  to 
take  the  places  of  those  whom  death  was  so  rapidly 
removing.  First  among  these  was  John  WinthrOp. 
Chosen  governor  in  1657,  deputy  governor  in 
1658,  and  governor  again  in  1659,  he  became  at 
once  so  necessary  to  the  people  of  Connecticut 
that  they  changed  the  provision  in  their  constitu- 
tion forbidding  the  immediate  reelection  of  a  gov- 
ernor, and  he  was  reelected  annually  until  his 
death  in  1676.  His  son,  Fitz  John,  following  in 
his  father's  course,  was  governor  from  1698  until 
his  death  in  1707.  The  Wyllyses,  Talcotts,  Wol- 
cotts,  Treats,  Shermans,  and  other  families  were 
sending  a  stream  of  young  men  into  public  life, 
and  all  of  them  were  well  fitted  for  it.  One  of  the 
ablest  of  the  new  men  was  John  AUyn  of  Hart- 
ford. Nominated  to  the  board  of  assistants  in 
1661,  he  was  chosen  secretary  of  state  in  1664, 
and  held  that  office  for  twenty-eight  years  between 


THE  TWO  COLONIES   UNTIL  THE  UNION.    161 

that  date  and  his  death  in  1696.  The  personali- 
ties of  the  men  of  the  time  get  little  attention, 
unless  their  work  is  theological,  as  in  the  case  of 
Hooker  or  Davenport,  or  their  non-essential  char- 
acteristics are  such  as  to  strike  the  public  attention 
and  so  win  some  advantage  for  the  colony,  as  in 
the  case  of  Winthrop.  The  mass  of  the  leaders 
pass  slowly  across  the  stage,  doing  their  work  like 
men,  but  leaving  us  hardly  any  notion  of  their  per- 
sonal appearance  or  traits.  The  influence  of  the 
feeling  is  shown  in  the  refusal  of  the  Wyllys 
family  to  erect  any  monuments  in  their  family 
bur^'ing  ground.  Said  one  of  them  :  "  If  Connecti- 
cut cannot  remember  the  Wyllyses  without  a 
monument,  let  their  memory  rot."  In  few  cases 
is  this  general  tendency  more  disappointing  than 
in  that  of  John  Allyn.  Hardly  any  trace  of  him 
is  left  beyond  the  cramped  but  legible  writing  in 
which  he  kept  the  records,  and  the  work  which 
those  records  detail.  And  yet  it  is  quite  evident 
that,  whenever  work  was  to  be  done  requiring 
stubborn  tenacity  of  purpose  and  cautious  shrewd- 
ness of  method,  John  Allyn's  name  always  appears 
in  the  center  of  it.  Like  so  many  of  his  contem- 
poraries, he  seems  to  have  been  entirely  satisfied 
with  the  reward  offered  by  the  consciousness  of 
effective  work ;  and  we  can  only  wonder  now  how 
much  the  commonwealth  of  Connecticut  owes  to 
John  Allyn. 

Eaton's  place  at  New  Haven  had  been  taken  by 
11 


162  CONNECTICUT. 

William  Leete,  who  served  as  governor  of  that 
colony  from  1661  until  the  union  of  the  colonies. 
He  was  one  of  the  original  settlers,  and  one  of  the 
seven  pillars  of  the  church  at  Guilford.  After  the 
union,  he  became  deputy  governor,  1669-75,  and 
then  served  as  governor  from  Winthrop's  death 
until  1680,  dying  in  1683. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

THE  CHARTER  AND  THE  TJNIOIT. 

Monk's  march  to  London  came  in  the  opening 
days  of  the  year  1660.  On  the  25th  of  April, 
Charles  landed  at  Dover  ;  and  in  July  the  momen- 
tous tidings  reached  Boston.  On  the  vessel  which 
brought  them  came  Whalley  and  GofFe,  two  of 
the  regicides :  England  was  no  longer  a  place  for 
them.  They  stayed  in  Boston  and  Cambridge 
until  the  following  February,  treated  at  first  with 
distinguished  consideration  by  the  authorities  as 
well  as  by  private  persons.  The  first  intelligence 
that  they  were  under  the  ban  of  the  new  govern- 
ment  made  such  a  change  in  their  treatment  that 
they  fled  to  New  Haven,  arriving  there  March  27. 
A  royal  warrant  for  their  arrest  followed  them 
from  Massachusetts  through  Hartford,  but  the 
messengers  found  their  errand  blocked  at  New 
Haven  by  the  most  exasperating  obstacles.  They 
had  to  yield  to  the  magistrates'  cautious  regard 
for  the  Sabbath  ;  their  documents  were  read  aloud 
in  public  meeting,  instead  of  being  treated  as 
secret-service  business  ;  and,  when  the  Sabbath 
came,  they  were  regaled  with  a  sermon  from  the 


164  CONNECTICUT. 

significant  text :  "  Hide  the  outcasts  ;  bewray  not 
him  that  wandereth  ;  let  mine  outcasts  dwell  with 
thee,  Moab  ;  be  thou  a  covert  to  them  from  the 
face  of  the  spoiler."  Davenport  and  his  people 
were  evidently  in  full  accord  with  the  regicides. 
Leete  and  the  magistrates  seem  to  have  seen  the 
consequences  of  their  action  ;  but  they  continued 
to  make  use  of  every  legal  obstacle  to  thwart  the 
arrest,  and  the  messengers  finally  returned  to  Bos- 
ton empty-handed,  though  the  two  judges  had 
been  concealed  at  New  Haven,  or  within  three 
miles  of  it,  throughout  their  visit.  The  "  Judges' 
Cave,"  on  the  summit  of  West  Rock,  sheltered 
them  for  a  month,  and  then  they  set  out  on  their 
wanderings.  Sometimes  in  New  Haven,  Guilford, 
or  Milford,  sometimes  in  their  old  refuge  or  like 
spots,  they  continued  to  escape  their  pursuers  for 
some  three  years.  In  1664,  finding  that  special 
royal  commissioners  had  arrived,  charged  with 
their  arrest,  they  went  to  Hadley,  in  western 
Massachusetts.  Their  choice  of  a  final  refuge 
shows  again  the  secret  tie  which  seems  to  have 
bound  together  the  New  Haven  people,  the  minor- 
ity of  the  dissatisfied  Connecticut  churches,  and 
the  Cromwellian  element  in  England ;  for  Had- 
ley's  settlement  had  been  due  to  the  secession  of 
a  minority  of  the  Hartford  and  Wethersfield 
churches.  This  was  the  scene  of  their  asserted 
appearance  to  head  the  settlers  in  repelling  an  In- 
dian attack ;  and  here  Whalley  died  about  1674, 


THE   CHARTER  AND   THE    UNION.  165 

and  Goffe  probably  five  years  later.  Their  burial- 
place  is  really  uncertain,  though  some  have  be- 
lieved it  to  be  in  New  Haven. 

The  authorities  of  Connecticut  were  as  anxious 
as  those  of  New  Haven  that  no  harm  should  come 
to  the  regicides,  and  the  fugitives  found  as  fre- 
quent and  as  secure  refuge  in  Hartford  as  any- 
where else.  But  the  difference  of  method  showed 
itself  in  this  as  in  other  cases.  When  the  regi- 
cides were  really  not  within  their  jurisdiction,  the 
Connecticut  authorities  always  seized  the  oppor- 
tunity to  make  their  zeal  in  the  king's  service 
evident.  They  overwhelmed  the  royal  commis- 
sioners with  warrants,  letters  of  authority,  and 
proclamations  ;  the  colony  was  in  a  ferment  be- 
cause of  their  haste  to  lay  hands  on  the  criminals  ; 
they  were  his  majesty's  most  faithful  servants. 
Under  the  like  circumstances,  the  New  Haven  au- 
thorities always  showed  a  decorous  satisfaction  in 
saying  No  to  the  commissioners,  which  went  far 
to  discount  the  sincerity  of  their  denials  when  the 
fugitives  were  suspected  to  be  concealed  within 
their  jurisdiction  with  their  privity.  They  could 
not  but  have  been  reported  to  the  home  authori- 
ties as  a  dangerous  colony,  the  remaining  quintes- 
sence of  Cromwellianism  ;  and  such  reports  could 
not  but  have  had  a  strong  influence  on  the  fortunes 
of  the  two  colonies  in  the  charter  struggle  which 
followed  immediately. 

The  records  of  Connecticut  show  nothing  done 


166  CONNECTICUT. 

in  regard  to  the  Restoration  until  March  14,  1660 
(61),  though  the  vote  then  passed  refers  to  a  pre- 
vious decision  at  an  informal  meeting  of  the  mag- 
istrates and  deputies.  On  the  date  just  given,  the 
general  court  voted  that  Charles  II.  should  be 
proclaimed  king ;  that  an  address  should  be  pre- 
pared and  sent  to  him,  asking  for  "  the  continu- 
ance and  confirmation  of  such  privilidges  and  lib- 
erties as  are  necessary  for  the  comfortable  and 
peaceable  settlement  of  this  colony  ; "  and  that 
the  X500  which  the  CuUick  estate  was  to  pay  the 
colony  should  be  reserved  to  pay  the  expense  of 
the  application.  The  court  of  election.  May  16, 
approved  a  draft  of  an  address  offered  by  Gover- 
nor Winthrop,  appointed  a  committee  to  revise 
and  complete  it,  and  named  the  governor  as  the 
colony's  agent  in  England  in  regard  to  the  patent. 
This  last  is  the  first  open  mention  of  what  must 
have  been  the  burning  desire  of  every  Connecticut 
leader,  —  the  obtaining  of  a  charter  to  give  legal 
title  to  what  had  been  done  by  popular  author- 
ity. At  the  session  of  June  7,  the  court  finally 
approved  the  address  which  had  been  completed, 
renewed  the  governor's  appointment  as  agent  "  to 
procure  us  a  patent,"  and  authorized  him  to  draw 
on  the  treasurer  for  £500.  From  that  time  there 
is  not  a  word  about  the  charter  in  the  records  un- 
til they  are  blazoned  with  the  triumphant  entry 
of  its  reception  in  October,  1662,  more  than  a 
year  afterward.     In  the  interim,  the  colony,  hav. 


THE  CUARTER  AND  THE   UNION.  167 

ing  done  all  that  it  could  do,  waited  in  sober  pa- 
tience. Just  as  Winthrop  was  embarking  for 
England,  New  Haven  at  last  proclaimed  Charles 
II.  king,  more  than  a  year  after  the  news  of  his 
accession  had  been  received  ;  and  the  step  was  not 
taken  until  remonstrances  had  been  received  from 
friends  at  home,  warning  the  colony  of  the  evil 
impression  which  its  continued  silence  was  mak- 
ing there.  The  form  has  been  called  grudging 
and  half-hearted.  In  reality,  it  almost  demands 
the  space  for  insertion  in  full,  for  the  sake  of  the 
refreshing  contrast  which  its  simple  and  manly 
terms  offer  to  the  servility  of  the  style  which  the 
habit  of  the  times  at  court  seems  to  have  extorted 
from  Connecticut.     It  is  as  follows : 

"  Although  we  have  not  received  any  form  of 
proclamation,  by  order  from  His  Majesty  or  Coun- 
cil of  State,  for  proclaiming  His  Majesty  in  this 
Colony;  yet  the  Court,  taking  encouragement 
from  what  has  been  done  in  the  rest  of  the  United 
Colonies,  hath  thought  fit  to  declare  publicly 
and  proclaim  that  we  do  acknowledge  His  Royal 
Highness,  Charles  the  Second,  King  of  England, 
Scotland,  France,  and  Ireland,  to  be  our  sovereign 
lord  and  king  ;  and  that  we  do  acknowledge  our- 
selves, the  inhabitants  of  this  colony,  to  be  his 
Majesty's  loyal  and  faithful  subjects." 

Winthrop  set  sail  for  England  in  August,  1661. 


168  CONNECTICUT. 

He  took  with  him  the  address  and  petition  to  his 
majesty,  which  had  cost  the  whole  intellect  of  the 
colony  such  prolonged  labor ;  a  letter  of  instruc- 
tions from  his  principals ;  and  letters  to  Lord  Say 
and  Sele,  and  the  Earl  of  Manchester,  two  old 
Puritans,  now  of  the  king's  privy  council.  The 
instructions  directed  him  to  consult  with  Say  and 
Sele,  Brooke,  and  such  of  the  original  patentees 
as  he  could  find  ;  to  endeavor  to  obtain  a  copy  of 
the  Say  and  Sele  patent,  and  have  it  confirmed  to 
the  colony,  with  such  amendments  as  could  be 
obtained  ;  and,  in  case  the  Say  and  Sele  patent 
could  not  be  come  at,  to  apply  for  a  new  patent 
for  the  colony,  with  bounds  extending  "  eastward 
to  the  Plymouth  line,  northward  to  the  limits  of 
the  Massachusetts  colony,  and  westward  to  the 
Bay  of  Delaware,  if  it  may  be."  The  southern 
limit  is  not  mentioned,  unless  a  recommendation 
to  include  the  adjacent  islands  be  considered  as 
carrying  the  limits  beyond  New  Haven  and  over 
Long  Island.  A  contemporary  protest  from  Con- 
necticut against  the  appointment  of  a  boundary 
committee,  cited  by  Atwater,  would  go  to  show 
that  such  was  the  case.  "  We  conceive  you  can- 
not be  ignorant  of  our  real  and  true  right  to  those 
parts  of  the  country  where  you  are  seated,  both  by 
conquest,  purchase,  and  possession,  though  hitherto 
we  have  been  silent,  and  altogether  forborne  to 
make  any  absolute  challenge  to  our  own."  The 
address  to  the  king  is  of  the  most  inflated  style  of 


THE   CHARTER   AND   THE   UNION.  169 

the  Stuart  period  of  English.  It  begins  with  a 
regret  that  its  authors  are  separated  by  so  vast  an 
ocean  from  those  who  are  under  the  immediate  in- 
fluence and  splendor  of  so  great  a  monarch,  in  the 
princely  palace  of  his  renowned  imperial  city,  the 
glory  of  the  whole  earth  ;  and  that  a  too  early 
winter  had  hindered  them  from  long  since  pros- 
trating themselves  by  an  humble  address  at  their 
sovereign  prince's  feet.  It  described  the  settle- 
ment of  the  colony  just  at  the  beginning  of  the 
sad  and  unhappy  times  of  the  wars  in  England, 
which  its  people  had  since  been  bewailing  with 
sighs  and  mournful  tears.  It  told  how  the  people 
of  Connecticut,  all  through  the  civil  war,  had 
been  hiding  themselves  behind  the  mountains  in 
that  desolate  desert,  as  a  people  forsaken,  choos- 
ing rather  to  sit  solitary,  and  wait  upon  the  Divine 
Providence  for  protection,  than  to  apply  to  any 
of  the  illegitimate  governments  which  had  arisen 
in  England,  their  hearts  still  remaining  entire  to 
his  majesty's  interests.  It  implored  his  majesty, 
now  that  the  beams  of  his  sovereignty  had  not 
only  filled  the  world's  hemisphere,  but  had  ap- 
peared over  the  great  deeps  in  the  New  England 
horizon,  to  accept  "  this  colony,  your  own  colony, 
a  little  branch  of  your  mighty  empire."  And  it 
pleaded  their  poverty  as  an  excuse  for  their  pre- 
sentation of  nothing  more  than  their  hearts  and 
loyal  affections  to  his  majesty.  It  is  hard  to  see 
how  Winthrop  could  have  read  the  document  with 
a  straight  face. 


170  CONNECTICUT. 

The  gratitude  of  the  colony  was  a  lively  sense 
of  favors  to  come  :  the  petition  which  accompanied 
the  address  was  as  straightforward  as  the  address 
was  circumgyratory.  It  asked  that  the  king 
would  grant  to  the  colony  a  patent  in  the  terms 
of  that  formerly  granted  to  the  Say  and  Sele  as- 
sociates, or  of  that  granted  to  Massachusetts  ;  and 
that  it  might  include  immunity  from  customs,  in 
order  that  the  colony  might  recoup  by  commerce 
its  losses  in  the  Pequot  war.  The  letters  to  Man- 
chester and  Say  and  Sele  besought  their  coopera- 
tion, which  was  heartily  given. 

Winthrop's  winter  in  London  was  spent  to  good 
advantage.  New  England  historians  have  wearied 
themselves  in  detailing  his  advantages  for  such  a 
negotiation  in  such  a  court,  —  his  natural  powers 
of  mind,  developed  by  sound  university  education  ; 
his  gentle  manners,  polished  by  continental  travel ; 
the  manly  beauty  of  his  face  and  person  ;  and  the 
kindly,  mature,  and  solid  judgment  which  governed 
the  whole  man.  The  story  is  also  told  of  a  ring 
given  to  Winthrop's  grandfather  by  Charles  I., 
and  now  returned  by  the  ambassador  to  the  new 
king  ;  and  the  charter  of  Connecticut  is  attributed 
almost  equally  to  the  tactful  courtesy  of  Winthrop 
and  the  filial  affection  of  Charles.  One  can  hardly 
help  a  suspicion,  however,  that  the  .£500,  which 
the  Connecticut  leaders  had  placed  at  Winthrop's 
disposal,  had  a  more  considerable  influence  on  the 
result  than  the  histories  have  yet  admitted.     The 


THE  CHARTER  AND  THE   UNION.  171 

new  court  had  required  some  time  to  get  warm  in 
its  seat  before  showing  plainly  the  depths  of  ve- 
nality to  which  it  was  prepared  to  descend.  The 
time  for  the  disposition  of  places,  and  of  all  kinds 
of  court  favors,  by  bargain  and  sale,  had  now  fully 
come ;  and  it  was  about  this  time  that  Samuel 
Pepys  seems  to  have  had  his  eyes  opened  to  the 
fact  that  this  was  the  way  in  which  many  of  those 
about  the  court  did  get  their  incomes.  At  any 
rate,  there  seems  to  have  been  no  final  accounting 
for  the  balance  of  the  X500  between  Winthrop 
and  the  colony.  Winthrop  had  gone  primarily 
on  his  own  business  :  so  says  the  resolve  of  May 
16, 1661.  The  colony  had  ordered  the  munificent 
sum  of  X80  to  be  paid  to  the  governor  as  his  salary 
for  the  year ;  and  it  would  not  have  been  likely 
to  have  passed  over  a  further  claim  of  X500  for 
mere  expenses,  unless  those  expenses  had  been 
somewhat  in  the  nature  of  a  secret-service  fund. 

There  is  a  sentence  in  the  petition  to  the  king 
which  may  possibly  have  some  significance.  "  May 
it  please  your  majesty  graciously  to  bestow  upon 
your  humble  supplicants  such  royal  munificence, 
according  to  the  tenor  of  a  draft  or  instrument, 
which  is  ready  here  to  be  tendered,  at  your  gra- 
cious order."  That  Charles  II.  should  have  drawn 
up  and  offered  to  a  Puritan  commonwealth  a  char- 
ter under  which,  as  Chalmers,  sound  royal  author- 
ity, says, "  over  their  acts  of  assembly  there  was 
no  power  of  revisal  reserved,  either  to  the  king  or 


172  CONNECTICUT. 

to  his  courts  of  justice,  nor  was  there  any  obliga- 
tion imposed  to  give  an  account  of  their  transac- 
tions to  any  authority  on  earth,"  is  hardly  a  con- 
ceivable theory.  That  a  charter  drawn  up  by 
Winthrop,  and  passing  through  some  of  the  many 
secret  channels  existing  at  the  court,  should  have 
passed  the  scrutiny  of  the  king,  more  through  favor 
for  the  channel  through  which  it  had  come  than 
through  filial  affection  or  liking  for  a  chance  ac- 
quaintance, is  at  least  more  easy  to  believe.  For 
no  more  democratic  charter  was  ever  given  by  a 
king  than  that  which  Charles  signed  for  Connecti- 
cut, April  23,  1662,  giving  it  a  government  which 
lasted  for  a  century  and  a  half,  until  the  adoption 
of  the  new  constitution  in  1818. 

The  charter  constituted  a  body  politic  and  cor- 
porate, under  the  name  of  "  Governor  and  Com- 
pany of  the  English  Colony  of  Connecticut  in  New 
England  in  America,"  to  consist  of  Winthrop, 
John  Mason,  seventeen  associates  named,  and  such 
other  persons  as  should  be  made  free  of  the  com- 
pany thereafter  (i.  e.,  admitted  voters),  with  all 
the  powers  of  an  English  corporation  and  with  a 
common  seal.  The  freemen  were  to  choose  from 
time  to  time  a  governor,  a  deputy  governor,  and 
twelve  assistants  ;  each  "  town,  place,  or  city  "  was 
to  send  two  deputies  ;  and  the  governor,  assistants, 
and  deputies  together  were  to  constitute  the  gen- 
eral assembly,  with  power  to  change  times  of  elec- 
tion, to  admit  freemen  (that  is,  to  establish  the 


THE   CHARTER  AND   THE    UNION.  173 

requisites  for  the  right  of  suffrage),  to  constitute 
judicatories,  to  make  laws  not  contrary  to  those  of 
England,  to  define  the  duties  of  oflBcers  and  the 
manner  of  their  election,  to  impose  fines  and  pen- 
alties or  revoke  them  and  pardon  offenses,  to  repel 
warlike  attacks  by  force,  and  to  hold  the  territory 
within  the  limits  granted  in  trust  for  the  freemen 
of  the  colony.  Until  the  second  Thursday  of  the 
following  October,  Winthrop  was  named  governor. 
Mason  deputy  governor,  and  twelve  of  the  charter 
members  assistants.  All  the  freemen  and  their 
descendants  were  to  have  the  rights  of  natural- 
born  English  subjects.  Finally,  the  territory  of 
the  colony  was  to  cover  "all  that  part  of  our  do- 
minions in  New  England  in  America  bounded  on 
the  east  by  Norrogancett  River,  commonly  called 
Norrogancett  Bay,  where  the  said  river  falleth 
into  the  sea,  and  on  the  north  by  the  line  of  the 
Massachusetts  Plantation,  and  on  the  south  by 
the  sea,  and  in  longitude  as  the  line  of  the  Mas- 
sachusetts colony,  running  from  east  to  west ;  that 
is  to  say,  from  the  said  Narrogancett  Bay  on  the 
east  to  the  South  Sea  on  the  west  part ;  with  the 
islands  thereunto  adjoining."  Connecticut*  was 
thus  to  have  a  domain  stretching  from  Narragan- 
sett  Bay  to  the  Pacific  Ocean  ;  and  the  charter- 
less  and  defenseless  colony  of  New  Haven  was 
included  within  these  limits. 

The  charter  was  first  produced  and  shown  in 
this  country  at  a  meeting  of  the  New  England 


174  CONNECTICUT. 

commissioners  at  Boston,  September  4, 1662.  The 
New  Haven  commissioners  must  have  sent  the 
startling  intelligence  home  at  once,  so  that  both 
the  interested  colonies  must  have  known  of  it 
about  the  same  time.  The  Connecticut  general 
court  records  for  October  9  note  that  the  "  pa- 
tent or  charter "  was  this  day  publicly  read  in 
the  presence  of  the  freemen,  and  that  a  committee 
of  three  had  been  appointed  to  take  the  charter 
into  their  custody  in  trust  for  the  colony.  Hart- 
ford was  then  declared  the  capital ;  the  civil  and 
military  ofl&cers  of  the  colony  were  confirmed  in 
their  places  ;  and  a  formal  letter  was  drawn  up  to 
the  constables  of  the  towns,  directing  them  to  col- 
lect the  taxes,  and  to  distrain  the  property  of  de- 
linquents. Such  laws  as  were  not  in  conflict  with 
the  terms  of  the  charter  were  validated  and  con- 
firmed. The  right  of  suffrage  was  regulated  by  an 
order  that  all  candidates  for  the  privilege  should 
bring  a  certificate  from  a  majority  vote  of  their 
town  that  they  were  persons  "  of  a  civil,  peaceable 
and  honest  conversation,"  twenty-one  years  old  or 
upward,  and  taxed  in  the  lists  for  at  least  .£20 
estate.  This  was  a  widening  of  the  elective  fran- 
chise, for  the  qualification  had  been  fixed  at  X30 
since  1657.  In  addition  to  these  enactments,  a 
long  series  of  resolutions  was  passed,  all  intended 
to  strike  at  the  weak  spot  of  New  Haven,  and 
break  up  the  political  organization  of  that  colony. 
Their  details  will  be  reserved  until  the  statement 


THE   CHARTER  AND   THE   UNION.  175 

of  the  events  which  gave  them  success  has  been 
made. 

On  its  part,  the  New  Haven  general  court,  at 
its  meeting  of  October  15,  merely  appointed  a  day 
of  fasting  and  prayer  for  guidance  "  in  this  weighty 
business  about  joining  with  Connecticut  colony." 
Immediately  after  the  fast,  a  New  Haven  town 
meeting  disapproved  any  such  union.  At  the 
freemen's  meeting,  November  4,  and  the  general 
court  meeting  on  the  following  day,  a  letter  from 
Connecticut  was  read,  enclosing  a  copy  of  the 
charter,  and  demanding  the  consummation  of  the 
union.  Two  answers  were  sent.  The  first  inti- 
mated mildly  that  New  Haven  was  not  *'  expressly 
included "  within  the  charter  jurisdiction,  and 
asked  that  the  New  Haven  colony  might  remain 
"  distinct,  entire,  and  uninterrupted,  as  hereto- 
fore," until  they  could  hear  from  Winthrop.  The 
second,  from  the  freemen,  argued  that  the  charter 
only  empowered  Connecticut  to  acquire  and  hold 
lands  within  the  limits  assigned,  but  did  not  author- 
ize it  to  interfere  with  the  lands  already  acquired 
by  New  Haven  ;  and  it  besought  the  Connecticut 
authorities  to  wait  until  they  could  make  appli- 
cation for  a  charter,  and  learn  his  majesty's  real 
intentions,  to  which  they  meant  to  submit.  Here 
the  public  records  become  silent  until  the  follow- 
ing spring. 

But  the  inherent  weakness  of  the  New  Haven 
confederacy,  arising  from  its  peculiar  ecclesiastical 


176  CONNECTICUT. 

system  and  Its  restrictions  on  the  right  of  suffrage, 
had  already  become  visible,  and  were  having  their 
influence  on  the  proceedings  of  both  parties  to  the 
controversy.  For  some  ten  years  before,  an  un- 
derlying spirit  of  dissatisfaction  seems  to  have 
cropped  out  from  time  to  time  ;  but,  the  final  out- 
burst seems  to  have  been  due,  at  least  indirectly, 
to  the  Quakers.  The  New  England  commissioners 
had  recommended  the  several  colonies,  in  Septem- 
ber, 1656,  to  take  measures  against  the  Quakers. 
Connecticut  complied  so  far  as  to  direct  that  any 
town  which  harbored  Quakers  should  be  fined ; 
but  the  execution  of  the  penalties  against  the  sect 
was  finally  left  "  to  the  discretion  "  of  the  magis- 
trates. They  seem  to  have  exercised  so  much  dis- 
cretion that  the  heretics,  despairing  of  any  chance 
of  martyrdom  in  this  quarter,  gave  Connecticut  a 
comparatively  wide  berth.  New  Haven,  on  the 
contrary,  went  into  the  matter  with  more  spirit. 
The  court  of  magistrates  itself  undertook  the  trial 
of  offenders,  and  every  trial  increased  the  number 
of  criminals.  The  public  and  indignant  criticisms 
of  the  Quakers  and  their  hai'borers  upon  the  meth- 
ods and  manners  of  the  New  Haven  jurisdiction 
must  have  been  as  fire  to  tow,  when  there  were  so 
many  others  dissatisfied  by  reason  of  more  tem- 
poral circumstances.  About  1660,  the  general 
court  begins  to  have  especial  trouble  in  regard  to 
letters  attacking  their  civil  organization  and  prac- 
tice.     It  looked   upon    all   such   offenses  as   not 


THE   CHARTER  AND   THE    UNION.  177 

merely  civil  offenses,  but  as  offenses  "  against  the 
King  of  Peace,  that  had  so  long  continued  peace 
amongst  them  ;  "  and  it  .punished  them  most  rigor- 
ously. The  number  of  its  assailants  rapidly  be- 
came greater,  as  did  the  exasperation  of  the  court, 
which  was  hardly  ever  out  of  hot  water  from  1660 
until  the  union  was  accomplished.  In  1661  the 
dissatisfaction  had  risen  so  high  that  several  of 
those  chosen  as  magistrates  refused  to  take  the 
oath ;  and  the  general  court  decided  to  make 
public  declaration  of  its  position.  It  acknowledged 
that  the  non-freemen  had  complained  that  "  just 
privileges  and  liberties  "  were  denied  them ;  but 
it  declared  that  this  denial  was  a  part  of  the  funda- 
mental system  of  the  colony,  established  by  law, 
from  which  it  would  not  be  diverted  by  any  agita- 
tion ;  and  it  added  the  hint  that  it  was  only  neces- 
sary for  the  dissentients  to  join  the  church  in  order 
to  qualify  themselves  for  the  enjoyment  of  the 
rights  to  vote  and  hold  office.  This  declaration 
must  have  added  fuel  to  the  flame  ;  and  the  coui-t's 
meeting  in  May,  1662,  gives  evidence  of  this.  The 
record  admits  that  there  was  "  great  discourage- 
ment upon  the  spirits  of  those  that  were  now  in 
place  of  magistracy  ; "  and  it  was  no  wonder. 
Cases  were  multiplying  of  men  who,  when  arrested, 
denied  the  authority  of  the  colony  to  make  laws 
now  that  the  king  was  proclaimed,  and  demanded 
of  the  marshal  "  whether  his  authority  came  from 
Charles  the  Second  ?  "    These  were  awkward  ques- 


178  CONNECTICUT. 

tions  for  New  Haven  to  answer.  As  they  multi- 
plied, the  embarrassment  of  the  court,  and  the 
hesitation  of  the  doubtful  mass  of  citizens,  in- 
creased with  them.  The  want  of  a  legal  basis  to 
the  colony's  authority  was  already  painfully  evi- 
dent, even  while  its  only  antagonists  were  its  own 
ill-disposed  citizens  :  what  was  to  be  the  difficulty 
of  the  case  when  Connecticut  should  set  up  her 
claims,  and  become  an  eager  refuge  and  support  to 
every  one  who  should  resist  the  authority  of  New 
Haven  ? 

It  was  at  this  session  that  Bray  Rossiter  of 
Guilford,  and  his  son  John,  the  Mother  Carey's 
chickens  of  the  coming  storm,  first  appeared  on 
tbe  scene.  The  father,  as  an  allowed  physician, 
had  claimed  exemption  from  taxation  ;  when  that 
was  refused,  he  excepted  to  the  colony's  right  to 
tax ;  and  now  he,  with  others  of  Guilford,  was 
haled  before  the  general  court  to  answer  to  the 
charge  of  having  sent  some  offensive  papers  to  the 
court,  and  of  having  spread  others  abroad,  "  to 
the  disturbance  of  the  peace  of  this  jurisdiction." 
Most  of  the  accused  apologized,  the  lamest  apolo- 
gies being  gladly  accepted  by  the  court ;  but  their 
statements  all  pointed  to  the  Rossiters  as  the  ring- 
leaders, and  the  court  hardly  knew  what  to  do 
with  them.  There  were  present,  says  the  record 
with  half  concealed  bitterness,  "  Mr.  Allen  and  Mr. 
Willis,  of  Connecticut,  waiting  to  see  an  issue  of 
the  business,  pretending  to  be  friends  to  us  and 


THE   CHARTER  AND   THE    UNION.  179 

friends  to  peace,  laboring  with  Mr.  Rossiter  and 
his  son  to  bring  him  to  some  acknowledgment  Of 
evil."  Finally  a  written  statement  was  accepted 
from  him  in  which  he  "  owned  that  in  several  pas- 
sages and  expressions  he  had  been  very  rash  and 
inconsiderate,"  and  agreed  to  submit  to  the  govern- 
ment "  while  he  continued  under  it."  The  Con- 
necticut charter  was  soon  to  relieve  him  from  con- 
scientious scruples  as  to  the  last-named  clause. 
It  is  noteworthy  that,  in  examining  one  of  the 
parties,  the  court  said  that  it  "  had  met  with  this 
business  both  from  Stamford  and  Southold  ;  "  and 
Southold  sent  no  deputies  to  this  session.  A  sum- 
mons was  sent  to  the  Southold  deputies  to  see  that 
the  taxes  were  paid,  and  to  report  for  prosecution 
all  persons  refusing  payment.  It  is  evident  that 
the  New  Haven  jurisdiction  was  already  among 
the  breakers. 

This  was  the  state  of  affairs  when  the  two  gen- 
eral courts  met  in  October,  and  the  Connecticut 
body  heard  their  invaluable  charter  read  to  the 
freemen.  Then  followed  the  first  series  of  orders 
by  which  Connecticut  spread  out  her  jurisdiction 
over  her  neighbor.  The  people  of  Southold  wrote 
that  they  had  had  notice  from  "Mr.  Willis,  of 
Connecticut,"  that  they  were  within  Connecticut's 
limits ;  and  that  they  had  appointed  Mr.  Young 
to  be  their  deputy.  Young  was  admitted  as  a 
freeman  and  deputy,  and  was  appointed  magistrate 
for  Southold  ;  and  the  people  of  that  place  were 


180  CONNECTICUT. 

tlirected  to  choose  a  constable,  to  whom  Young 
was  to  administer  the  oath  of  fidelity  to  Connec- 
ticut. Similar  applications  were  received  from 
"several  inhabitants"  of  Stamford  and  Green- 
wich, of  Huntington  and  Oyster  Bay,  on  Long 
Island;  and  these  towns,  with  Mystic  and  Pawca- 
tuck  in  the  district  claimed  by  Massachusetts, 
were  directed  to  choose  Connecticut  constables, 
for  the  constable  seems  still  to  have  been  the  pivot 
of  town  authority.  The  court  went  further,  and 
ordered  that  word  be  sent  to  the  inhabitants  of 
"Westchester  that  they  too  were  within  the  colony's 
chartered  limits,  and  that  they  should  follow  the 
same  procedure.  In  the  new  pride  of  the  charter, 
the  colony  was  ready  to  throw  down  the  gantlet 
not  only  to  New  Haven  and  Massachusetts,  but  to 
the  Dutch  also.  So  fully  had  the  colony  taken 
its  position,  that,  at  the  meeting  of  the  following 
March,  it  was  necessary  to  do  no  more,  except  to 
vote  £20  to  Mr.  Rossiter. 

The  letter  to  New  Haven,  and  the  answers  of 
the  New  Haven  committee  and  freemen,  already 
mentioned,  occupied  the  winter ;  but  the  forces 
which  were  disintegrating  New  Haven  met  no 
check.  The  Connecticut  committee,  in  March, 
1663,  proposed  nearly  the  same  terms  of  union, 
which  were  finally  adopted ;  but  New  Haven  re- 
jected them,  on  the  ground  that  she  had  appealed 
to  the  king  and  could  not  prejudice  her  appeal. 
In  May,  New  Haven  sent  another  remonstrance  to 


THE   CHARTER  AND   THE    UNION.  181 

Connecticut ;  but  it  is  noteworthy  that  her  ofB. 
cers,  then  elected,  took  the  oath  "  for  the  year  en- 
suing, or  until  our  foundation  settlements  be  made 
null."  In  August,  her  committee  showed  further 
signs  of  weakness  by  proposing  a  series  of  a  dozen 
questions  as  to  the  terms  on  which  a  treaty  of 
union  could  be  effected ;  and  the  answer  of  the 
Connecticut  committee  certainly  gave  them  full 
assurance  of  perfect  equality  and  security  for  all 
their  rights,  except  the  exclusive  privileges  of 
church-members,  under  the  New  Haven  system. 
In  September,  the  New  Haven  delegates  com- 
plained to  the  New  England  commissioners  of  the 
action  of  Connecticut,  particularly  of  the  appoint- 
ment of  constables,  "  who  are  very  troublesome 
to  us."  Connecticut  answered,  and  Massachu- 
setts and  Plymouth  decided  that,  as  New  Haven 
had  been  recognized  as  an  independent  member  of 
the  confederation,  any  infringement  on  her  juris- 
diction would  be  a  violation  of  the  articles  of 
union  ;  and  that  any  such  act  in  the  past  ought  to 
be  recalled.  All  this  time,  however,  the  Connec- 
ticut authorities  were  quietly  allowing  their  new 
agents  in  the  New  Haven  towns  to  carry  on  their 
work  ;  and  the  results  were  that  before  the  end  of 
the  next  year  the  unfortunate  colony  of  New 
Haven  was  deeply  in  debt,  unable  to  collect 
taxes,  and  unable  even  to  pay  the  salaries  of  her 
officers. 

At  the  meeting  in  December,  1663,  the  New 


182  CONNECTICUT. 

Haven  court  had  received  some  poor  encourage- 
ment in  two  letters,  one  from  Winthrop,  the  other 
from  the  English  privy  council.  Winthrop's  let- 
ter was  to  John  Mason,  deputy  governor,  and 
the  Connecticut  general  court ;  but  he  had  sent  a 
copy  to  New  Haven.  He  remonstrated  against  the 
appointment  of  constables  in  New  Haven  towns, 
and  wished  that  all  such  proceedings  should  be 
suspended  until  his  return  home,  when  he  hoped 
to  arrange  an  amicable  union  of  the  two  colonies. 
His  language  as  to  his  own  previous  pledges  is 
curiously  ambiguous :  "  And  further  I  must  let 
you  know  that  testimony  here  doth  affirm  that  I 
gave  assurance  before  authority  here,  that  it  was 
not  intended  to  meddle  with  any  town  or  planta- 
tion that  was  settled  under  any  other  government ; 
had  it  been  otherwise  intended  or  declared,  it  had 
been  injurious  in  taking  out  the  patent  not  to 
have  inserted  a  proportionable  number  of  their 
names  in  it."  Who  can  make  out  from  this 
whether  Winthrop  means  to  endorse  this  asserted 
promise  of  his  or  not?  The  course  of  the  two 
governors,  indeed,  is  almost  inexplicable.  Win- 
throp obtains  a  charter,  covering  New  Haven  ; 
the  New  Haven  authorities  assert,  without  con- 
tradiction, that  he  had  twice  promised  in  writing, 
before  setting  out  for  England,  that  he  would  not 
have  New  Haven  included  under  his  colony's  ju- 
risdiction ;  and  Winthrop  finally  makes  this  curi- 
ously roundabout  admission,  with  which  all  par- 


THE   CHARTER  AND   THE    UNION.  183 

ties  seem  afraid  to  meddle  further.  On  the  other 
hand,  while  Leete,  the  New  Haven  governor,  ful- 
fills all  his  duties  through  the  crisis  with  punctu- 
ality, his  action  always  carries  a  suspicion  that  it 
is  perfunctory ;  his  heart  does  not  seem  to  be  in 
the  work.  No  one  who  has  followed  the  records 
carefully  will  be  at  all  surprised  by  the  assertion 
of  Hubbard  and  Mather,  that  the  action  of  Win- 
throp  in  so  framing  the  charter  as  to  include  New 
Haven  was  by  the  special  desire  of  Governor 
Leete  himself ;  nor  by  the  assertion  of  the  Con- 
necticut governor  and  council  in  1675,  when 
Leete  was  deputy  governor  and  present,  with  sev- 
eral of  the  former  New  Haven  leaders,  that  *'  their 
[New  Haven]  conjunction  with  this  colony  was 
desired  by  the  chief  amongst  them."  Leete's 
action  was  repudiated  by  Davenport,  in  a  letter 
to  Winthrop,  as  "  his  private  doing,  without  the 
consent  or  knowledge  of  any  of  us  in  this  col- 
ony ;  "  "  not  done  by  him  according  to  his  public 
trust  as  governor,  but  contrary  to  it."  And  yet, 
so  far  from  repudiating  Leete,  the  people  reelected 
him  governor.  The  facts  probably  are  that  Leete 
and  other  New  Haven  leaders  were  quietly  tired 
of  the  whole  New  Haven  system,  and  despaired  of 
their  ability  to  maintain  it  longer  ;  that  Winthrop 
ascertained  this  fact  just  before  leaving  for  Eng- 
land ;  and  that  much  of  the  fury  of  words  which 
was  expended  on  the  negotiations  was  meant  to 
allow  events  to  take  their  course,  while  the  honest 


184  CONNECTICUT. 

and  conscientious  upholders  of  the  old  system 
were  being  satisfied  and  convinced  of  the  futility 
of  further  resistance.  The  times  were  out  of 
joint  for  New  Haven ;  and  while  the  leaders  were 
not  disposed  to  help  overturn  their  fathers'  work, 
they  were  no  more  disposed  to  stand  in  the  way 
of  events.  No  doubt  Winthrop  was  relieved  to 
find  on  his  return  that  Connecticut  had  gone  on 
obstinately  in  her  course  ;  and  no  doubt  also  Leete 
was  no  less  relieved  to  impart  the  news. 

The  privy  council's  letter  was  no  more  than  a 
circular  to  the  governors  of  the  New  England 
colonies  ;  but  as  it  was  directed  to  New  Haven 
among  the  rest,  that  colony  took  this  as  an  evi- 
dence that  the  king  had  had  no  intention  of  ab- 
sorbing them  in  the  rival  colony.  A  sounding 
proclamation  was  issued  at  once.  It  rehearsed 
the  special  orders  of  the  council  in  regard  to  New 
Haven,  being  careful  to  note  the  addition  of  his 
majesty's  sign  manual  "  in  red  wax ; "  it  stated 
the  embarrassment  which  the  colony  was  under 
in  fulfilling  the  king's  directions  by  reason  of  the 
refusal  of  some  ill-disposed  persons  to  pay  their 
legal  taxes ;  and  it  cautioned  all  such  persons  to 
cease  their  opposition  at  once.  It  is  almost  pitiful 
to  see  the  eagerness  with  which  the  colony,  which 
had  settled  here  in  primitive  independence,  now 
seized  on  this  straw  of  royal  recognition  ;  and, 
however  one  may  admit  the  necessity  and  benefit 
of  the  union,  he  can  hardly  help  wishing  that  the 
manly  little  colony  had  not  been  forced  into  it. 


THE   CHARTER  AND   THE    UNION.  185 

Connecticut  had  succeeded  in  stirring  up  a 
hornet's  nest  in  almost  every  quarter.  Her  gen- 
eral assembly  had  appointed  agents  for  the  colony, 
with  the  powers  of  magistrates,  in  the  New  Haven 
towns  on  the  mainland  and  Long  Island,  in  the 
Dutch  towns  of  Hempstead,  Jamaica,  Flushing, 
and  Westchester,  and  in  the  Narragansett  or 
Rhode  Island  country  as  far  east  as  Wickford. 
Stuyvesant  had  appeared  before  the  commission- 
ers at  Boston,  in  September,  1663,  to  protest  on 
behalf  of  the  Dutch ;  and  the  commissioners, 
while  recommending  a  reference  of  the  matter  to 
them  at  their  next  meeting,  took  ground  against 
any  violation  of  the  boundaries  agreed  upon  in 
the  treaty  of  1650.  The  people  of  the  Narragan- 
sett country  were  memorializing  the  Massachu- 
setts general  court.  New  Haven's  protests  found 
a  sympathetic  audience  in  the  majority  of  the 
New  England  union.  Connecticut  hardly  seemed 
to  have  a  friend.  The  state  of  affairs,  however, 
had  one  favorable  aspect :  each  of  the  other  par- 
ties had  too  many  interests  of  its  own  to  attend 
to  for  any  unswerving  support  of  New  Haven. 
Connecticut  agreed  not  to  make  any  present  claim 
of  exclusive  jurisdiction  over  the  Dutch  towns  ; 
and  a  more  temporizing  policy  as  to  the  Massa- 
chusetts contest  left  New  Haven  finally  isolated. 
Nevertheless,  that  sturdy  colony  again  resolved 
in  December  to  make  no  treaty  with  Connecticut 
.  until  affairs  had  been  restored  again  to  their  origi- 


186  CONNECTICUT. 

nal  condition.  It  also  ordered  that  distraint  be 
made  for  unpaid  taxes.  This  last  step  brought 
about  a  significant  hint  of  a  readiness  to  resist  by 
force.  On  the  last  day  of  the  year,  the  Rossiters, 
who  had  gone  to  Hartford  and  secured  a  Connecti- 
cut constable  and  magistrates,  created  a  terrible 
hubbub  in  Guilford  before  daylight.  Guns  were 
fired  ;  the  inhabitants  were  roused  and  thrown 
into  great  confusion ;  and  assistance  had  to  be 
summoned  from  New  Haven  and  Branford  to  keep 
order.  Though  this  was  accomplished,  the  object 
of  the  Rossiters  was  accomplished  with  it,  for  it 
was  agreed  that  tax  collection  and  distraint  should 
be  suspended  for  the  present. 

New  Haven's  position  was  now  desperate. 
There  was  no  money  in  the  treasury ;  the  towns 
were  divided  within  themselves ;  there  was  no 
physical  force  to  constrain  the  disloyal ;  and  the 
authorities  were  either  discouraged  or  faint- 
hearted. Leete  called  a  special  session  of  the 
general  court  in  January,  1663  (4),  and  laid  the 
state  of  the  case  before  it.  It  still  stubbornly 
voted  not  to  treat ;  and  it  named  Messrs.  Daven- 
port and  Street  a  committee  to  draw  up  its  griev- 
ances in  writing.  The  committee's  work  is  com- 
monly known  as  "  New  Haven's  Case  Stated." 
It  is  the  most  dignified  and  pathetic  document  in 
the  whole  controversy.  It  stated  the  origin  of  the 
colony ;  its  title  by  purchase ;  its  recognition  by 
the  Dutch,  by  parliament,  by  the  king,  by  the 


THE  CHARTER  AND   THE    UNION.  187 

united  colonies  of  New  England,  and  by  Connec- 
ticut herself ;  the  promises  of  Winthrop  ;  and  the 
turbulent  and  seditious  practices  of  Connecticut 
toward  her  sister  colony,  contrary  to  righteousness 
and  peace ;  and  it  demanded  that  reparation  be 
offered  for  the  past,  and  security  for  the  future. 
The  document  was  in  the  form  of  a  letter  to  the 
Connecticut  general  assembly ;  and  it  is  to  be  re- 
gretted that  Connecticut's  answer  was  by  no  means 
so  dignified.  Its  tone  is  that  of  triumph  and  ex- 
ultation ;  and  its  writers  were  evidently  out  of 
patience  with  long  waiting.  There  are  indica- 
tions, however,  in  a  most  amicable  contempora- 
neous correspondence  between  the  two  commit- 
tees, that  both  parties  had  about  accepted  the  fact 
of  union  as  inevitable,  and  had  pretty  well  agreed 
on  its  terms.  At  any  rate,  the  New  Haven  gen- 
eral court  ceased  from  this  time  to  do  any  impor- 
tant business. 

The  inevitable  conclusion  was  hastened  by  an 
unexpected  event.  It  was  now  March,  1664,  the 
month  in  which  King  Charles  made  his  grant  of 
the  territory  then  in  New  Netherland  to  his 
brother,  the  Duke  of  York.  The  grant  covered 
the  whole  of  Long  Island,  and  the  mainland  from 
Delaware  Bay  to  the  Connecticut  River,  thus  in- 
cluding both  Hartford  and  New  Haven  within  its 
limits.  Little  as  they  liked  Connecticut,  the  New 
Haven  people  liked  the  duke  less  ;  and  the  only 
apparent  security  against  his  government,  for  both 


188  CONNECTICUT. 

colonies,  was  in  the  charter  of  Connecticut.  The 
news  of  the  grant  was  brought  to  Boston  by  the 
fleet  and  army  of  Nichols  in  July ;  and  the  down- 
fall of  the  Dutch  government  at  Manhadoes  fol- 
lowed in  August.  In  the  same  month,  Leete 
called  a  meeting  of  his  general  court,  and  in- 
formed them  that  their  committee  recommended 
submission.  With  great  confusion  and  dissatis- 
faction, a  vote  to  that  effect  was  passed,  then  re- 
considered, and  then  passed  again  in  about  the 
same  words  ;  but  the  people  were  still  so  stubborn 
that  the  vote  amounted  to  little. 

In  September,  the  New  Haven  delegates  were 
admitted  for  the  last  time,  and  against  the  pro- 
test of  Connecticut,  to  seats  in  the  meeting  of  the 
New  England  commissioners.  In  October,  the 
Connecticut  general  assembly  appointed  a  com- 
mittee to  demand  the  submission  of  New  Haven, 
and  to  admit  New  Haven  freemen  as  Connecticut 
freemen  ;  and  it  also  appointed  Leete  and  other 
New  Haven  leaders  agents  of  Connecticut,  with 
the  powers  of  magistrates,  to  administer  justice, 
and  ordered  all  other  officers  to  retain  their  places 
and  perform  their  duties  until  the  next  election. 
In  November,  the  representatives  of  Connecticut 
attended  a  meeting  of  royal  commissioners  at  New 
York,  to  settle  the  limits  between  New  York  and 
Connecticut.  This  erudite  body  assigned  Long  Is- 
land to  "■  the  Ducke  off  Yorke,"  and  all  plantations 
!ying  eastward  of  a  certain  creek  or  river  called 


THE  CHARTER  AND   THE   UNION.  189 

"  Momoronack,  which  is  reputed  to  be  about 
twelve  miles  to  the  east  of  Westchester,"  to  Con- 
necticut. This  was  accepted  as  the  king's  decision 
by  the  much-enduring  New  Haven  colony.  The 
general  court,  with  "  as  many  of  the  inhabitants 
as  was  pleased  to  come,"  voted  to  submit,  but  "with 
a  salvo  jure  of  our  former  right  and  claim,  as  a 
people  who  have  not  yet  been  heard  in  point  of 
plea."  Connecticut  had  renewed  her  first  offers 
of  ample  security  for  equality  under  the  charter, 
and  in  her  answer  to  the  notice  of  submission  asked 
that  all  unpleasant  reflections  might  be  "  buried 
in  perpetual  silence."  When  the  general  as- 
sembly met  at  Hartford  in  March,  1665,  deputies 
from  the  former  New  Haven  towns  were  present ; 
the  proceedings  were  harmonious  ;  and  Leete  and 
three  other  New  Haven  leaders  were  chosen  magis- 
trates or  assistants.  The  colony  of  New  Haven 
had  ceased  to  exist,  and  ecclesiastical  supremacy 
had  given  way  to  democracy. 

In  October,  1665,  in  probable  pursuance  of 
terms  before  agreed  upon,  the  general  assembly 
ordered  that  two  county  courts  be  held  at  New 
Haven  in  June  and  November.  These  introduced 
trial  by  jury  into  the  former  New  Haven  territory, 
while  they  preserved  to  the  people  all  that  could 
be  granted  of  their  former  autonomy.  In  May, 
1666,  the  general  assembly  proceeded  to  divide 
the  commonwealth  into  four  counties,  the  bound' 


190  CONNECTICUT. 

aries  of  New  Haven  county  extending  "  from  the 
east  bounds  of  Guilford  unto  the  west  bounds  of 
Milford."  This  made  a  change  in  the  common- 
wealth's judicial  system.  Until  1665,  the  highest 
judicial  body  was  the  particular  court,  composed 
of  the  governor  or  deputy  and  the  magistrates. 
From  1665  until  1711,  the  particular  court  was 
succeeded  by  the  court  of  assistants,  seven  of  the 
twelve  assistants  chosen  by  the  general  assembly. 
The  superior  court  was  introduced  in  1711,  and 
the  supreme  court  of  errors  and  appeals,  composed 
of  the  governor  and  assistants,  in  1784.  From 
1807  until  1855,  the  latter  was  composed  of  supe- 
rior court  judges  sitting  in  bank,  and,  since  1855, 
of  district  judges.  The  commonwealth's  court 
of  assistants,  however,  did  not  sit  at  New  Haven 
until  1701. 

Connecticut  has  played  no  small  part  in  the 
development  of  the  American  Union,  and  in  the 
peaceful  conquest  of  the  great  western  continent ; 
and  her  part  would  have  been  sadly  marred  if  the 
integrity  of  her  natural  boundaries  had  been  broken 
by  the  continued  existence  of  the  separate  colony 
on  the  south.  Her  leaders  of  1662-65  were  bound 
by  every  regard  to  the  future  of  the  common- 
wealth to  insist  on  the  absorption  of  New  Haven ; 
their  insistence  showed  their  foresight.  And  yet, 
even  though  the  commonwealth  emerges  from  the 
struggle  with  its  natural  outline   unbroken,  one 


THE   CHARTER  AND    THE   UNION.  191 

may  be  pardoned  a  feeling  of  regret  as  New  Haven 
sinks  beneath  the  surface  after  her  persistent 
fight  for  life.  The  county  of  New  Haven  does 
not  quite  fill  the  void  left  by  the  republic  of  New 
Haven. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

THE   COMMONWEALTH.      1662-1763. 

Before  the  grant  of  the  charter,  the  general 
court  of  Connecticut  had  begun  to  show  the  char- 
acteristics of  a  real  commonwealth  government. 
No  exact  point  of  time  can  be  stated  at  which  the 
transformation  took  place  ;  but  there  is  a  plain 
difference  between  the  generally  recommendatory- 
tone  in  which  the  court  was  in  the  habit  of  ad- 
dressing the  towns  in  1 640,  and  the  decidedly  man- 
datory tone  into  which  it  had  grown  in  1660.  As 
soon  as  the  charter  had  given  it  the  consciousness 
of  a  legal  title  to  existence  and  authority  apart 
from  its  town  units,  its  drift  in  the  assumption  of 
powers  heretofore  left  to  the  towns  became  some- 
what stronger,  until  the  essential  commonwealth 
interests  had  been  brought  under  its  jurisdiction. 
And  yet  it  never  lost  the  influence  of  the  forces 
which  had  founded  the  colony.  The  Connecticut 
towns,  while  they  were  generally  content  to  con- 
fine their  work  to  the  matters  of  purely  local  in- 
terest which  had  been  left  to  them  by  the  general 
assembly,  had  never  any  hesitation  in  resisting,  by 
all  peaceable  means,  any  action  of   the  supreme 


THE  COMMONWEALTH.  193 

legislative  body  which  seemed  to  them  unjust ; 
and  the  general  assembly,  in  its  turn,  was  always 
disposed  to  treat  such  town  resistance  mildly,  and 
to  seek  for  an  accommodation  rather  than  resort 
to  force. 

During  the  century  which  followed  the  grant  of 
the  charter,  Connecticut  had  but  nine  governors, 
excluding  Andros.  All  of  these,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Wolcott,  who  was  dropped  by  reason  of 
accusations  of  extortion,  served  until  death  or  ad- 
vancing age  compelled  the  choice  of  another  ;  and 
as  the  elections  were  annual,  the  long  terms  of  ser- 
vice speak  well  for  the  satisfaction  of  the  people 
with  the  rulers  of  their  choice,  and  for  the  conser- 
vatism and  "  steady  habits  "  of  the  Connecticut 
people. 

For  some  years  after  1665  the  colony  went  on 
in  comparative  quiet,  developing  new  towns  in 
every  direction,  and  disturbed  only  by  boundary 
disputes  with  its  neighbors,  by  King  Philip's  war, 
and  by  the  temporary  recapture  of  New  York  by 
a  Dutch  fleet  and  army  in  1673-74.  The  latter 
alarm  was  short-lived.  The  forces  of  New  England 
were  set  in  array  ;  the  English  towns  on  Long 
Island  returned  gladly  to  the  jurisdiction  of  Con- 
necticut for  protection ;  but  peace  between  Eng- 
land and  Holland  restored  the  province  of  New 
York  to  the  duke  in  1674.  The  king  issued  a 
new  patent  for  the  province,  in  which  he  not  only 
included  Long  Island,  but  the  territory  up  to  the 
13 


194  CONNECTICUT. 

Connecticut  River,  which  liad  been  assigned  to 
Connecticut  by  the  royal  commissioners.  The 
assignment  of  Long  Island  was  regretted,  but  not 
resisted ;  and  the  island  which  is  the  natural  sea- 
wall of  Connecticut  passed,  by  royal  decree,  to  a 
province  whose  only  natural  claim  to  it  was  that 
it  barely  touched  it  at  one  corner.  The  revival  of 
the  duke's  claim  to  a  part  of  the  mainland  was  a 
different  matter,  and  every  preparation  was  made 
for  resistance.  In  July,  1675,  just  as  King  Philip's 
war  had  broken  out  in  Plymouth,  hasty  word  was 
sent  from  the  authorities  at  Hartford  to  Captain 
Thomas  Bull  at  Saybrook  that  Governor  Andros 
of  New  York  was  on  his  way  through  the  Sound 
for  the  purpose,  as  he  avowed,  of  aiding  the  people 
against  the  Indians.  Of  the  two  evils,  Connecti- 
cut rather  preferred  the  Indians.  Bull  was  in- 
structed to  inform  Andros,  if  he  should  call  at  Say- 
brook,  that  the  colony  had  taken  all  precautions 
against  the  Indians,  and  to  direct  him  to  the  actual 
scene  of  conflict,  but  not  to  permit  the  landing  of 
any  armed  soldiers.  "  And  you  are  to  keep  the 
king's  colors  standing  there,  under  his  majesty's 
lieutenant,  the  governor  of  Connecticut ;  and  if 
any  other  colors  be  set  up  there,  you  are  not  to 
suffer  them  to  stand.  .  .  .  But  you  are  in  his 
majesty's  name  required  to  avoid  striking  the  first 
blow ;  but  if  they  begin,  then  you  are  to  defend 
yourselves,  and  do  your  best  to  secure  his  majesty's 
interest  and  the  peace  of  the  whole  colony  of  Con- 


THE   COMMONWEALTH.  195 

necticut  in  our  possession."  Andros  came  and 
landed  at  Saybrook,  but  confined  his  proceedings 
to  reading  the  duke's  patent,  against  the  protest 
of  Bull  and  the  Connecticut  representatives.  It 
may  have  been  thought  that  this  success  would 
meet  the  approval  of  the  Hartford  authorities, 
but  they  were  made  of  sterner  stuff.  While  com- 
mending the  officers  and  men  engaged,  they  added 
significantly :  "  We  wish  he  had  been  interrupted 
in  doing  the  least  thing  under  pretense  of  his  hav- 
ing anything  to  do  to  use  his  majesty's  name  in 
commanding  there  so  usurpingly,  which  might  have 
been  done  by  shouts,  or  sound  of  drum,  etc.,  without 
violence.''^  This  lesson  of  unhesitating  resistance 
was  not  lost  on  succeeding  officers  of  the  colony. 
In  October,  1693,  Benjamin  Fletcher,  the  hot- 
tempered  governor  of  New  York,  appeared  at  Hart- 
ford with  his  majesty's  commission  to  act  as  com- 
mander-in-chief of  the  New  England  militia.  In 
spite  of  the  assembly's  protest,  he  ordered  out  the 
militia,  and  went  to  the  parade  ground  to  review 
them.  The  commanding  officer  was  Captain 
Wadsworth,  who  had  saved  the  charter  from  An- 
dros. Fletcher  began  to  read  his  commission. 
Wadsworth  ordered  the  drums  to  beat ;  and,  says 
Trumbull,  "  there  was  such  a  roaring  of  them  that 
nothing  else  could  be  heard."  Fletcher  angrily 
demanded  silence,  and  the  drummers  hesitatingly 
complied.  The  instant  the  reading  of  the  com- 
mission was  renewed,  Wadsworth  shouted,  *'  Drum, 


196  CONNECTICUT. 

drum,  I  say  !  "  Again  the  rattle  began,  and  again 
the  governor  struggled  for  silence.  When  he  had 
obtained  it,  Wads  worth  turned  to  him  and  said, 
"  If  I  am  interrupted  again,  I  will  make  the  sun 
shine  through  you."  He  then  gave  final  orders  to 
his  drummers,  and  the  governor  retired  without 
having  his  commission  read. 

Connecticut  suffered  comparatively  little  from 
the  horrors  of  King  Philip's  war ;  the  lesson  to 
her  Indians  had  been  too  sternly  taught  for  that. 
It  is  a  little  curious  to  notice  how  close  the  storm 
of  war  came  to  her  northern  and  eastern  bound- 
aries without  overpassing  them.  There  were  burn- 
ings and  massacres  through  the  western  borders 
of  Massachusetts,  and  battles  in  Rhode  Island ; 
but  the  Connecticut  men  regularly  fought  outside 
of  their  own  colony.  The  colony,  however,  must 
have  been  kept  in  a  constant  state  of  alarm  by 
the  near  approach  of  hostilities,  and  her  troops 
were  freely  furnished,  and  took  an  active  part. 
She  kept  in  the  field  about  one  third  of  the  New 
England  forces.  It  was  Major  Treat,  with  a  Con- 
necticut force,  who  relieved  the  Essex  men  at 
Deerfield,  and  drove  off  the  Indian  besiegers  of 
Springfield  and  Hadley  ;  and  in  the  great  swamp 
fight,  Connecticut's  contingent  of  three  hundred 
men  lost  eighty  killed  and  wounded,  or  about  half 
the  total  loss.  In  sober,  manly,  and  striking  lan- 
guage, the  general  assembly  gave  them  a  fitting 
epitaph :    "  There  died   many  brave  officers  and 


THE  COMMONWEALTH.  197 

sentinels,  whose  memory  is  blessed,  and  whose 
death  redeemed  our  lives.  The  bitter  cold,  the 
tarled  swamp,  the  tedious  march,  the  strong  fort, 
the  numerous  and  stubborn  enemy  they  contended 
with,  for  their  God,  king  and  country,  be  their 
trophies  over  death.  Our  mourners,  over  all  the 
colony,  witness  for  our  men  that  they  were  not 
unfaithful  in  that  day." 

Andros  had  come  out  as  governor  of  New  York 
on  its  recovery  from  the  Dutch  in  1674.  All  the 
letters  of  the  Connecticut  council,  as  the  upper 
house  of  the  assembly  was  called  under  the  char- 
ter, show  a  standing  distrust  of  Andros,  which 
was  a  fitting  prelude  to  their  intercourse  ten  years 
later.  Such  distrust,  in  the  case  of  an  able  man 
as  Andros  seems  to  have  been,  was  certainly  in- 
evitable. The  state  of  affairs  was  worthy  of  no- 
tice. The  Empire  State  of  New  York  has  little 
reason  to  envy  the  prosperity  of  the  State  of  Con- 
necticut in  1886  ;  the  case  was  far  otherwise  in 
1674.  At  that  time,  an  able,  enterprising  cava- 
lier officer,  sent  out  as  governor  of  the  duke's 
province  of  New  York,  found  his  energies  crippled 
with  the  management  of  a  territory  consisting  of 
two  fairly  important  towns,  a  few  straggling  set- 
tlements on  the  Hudson,  and  some  disaffected 
New  England  townships  on  Long  Island.  This 
western  half  of  Connecticut  was  just  the  strip  of 
territory  needed  to  make  New  York  a  province  in 
reality,  and  to  enable  him  to  do  essential  service 


198  CONNECTICUT. 

against  his  majesty's  enemies  in  Canada ;  the 
duke  had  at  least  a  claim  to  it;  and  the  royal 
governor  could  not  be  expected  to  appreciate  at 
their  full  value  the  objections  of  a  set  of  Hart- 
ford Puritans  to  this  most  necessary  absorp- 
tion. A  boozing,  incompetent  governor  of  New 
York  was  an  immense  relief  to  the  Connecticut 
authorities  :  a  man  of  Andros's  abilities  had  to  be, 
and  always  was,  dealt  with  at  arm's  length.  His 
offers  of  help  against  the  Indians  were  accepted 
cordially,  but  were  always  restricted  to  the  exact 
service  required.  The  letters  which  passed  be- 
tween the  two  parties  show  a  constant  sense  of 
the  real  situation,  in  their  mixture  of  distinguished 
courtesy  with  occasional  railing,  and  in  the  con- 
stant readiness  of  Connecticut  to  bristle  up  in  de- 
fense of  some  point  which  the  governor  was  al- 
ways ready  to  assure  them  was  not  of  the  least 
importance.  The  intercourse,  however,  gave  Con- 
necticut a  very  fair  knowledge  of  Andros's  char- 
acter and  methods,  which  must  have  been  of  ser- 
vice in  the  coming  struggle. 

In  the  later  years  of  Charles  II.,  royal  commis- 
sioners, headed  by  Edward  Randolph,  gave  New 
England  much  distress,  urging  upon  the  home 
government  the  general  neglect  of  the  navigation 
acts,  and  the  offensive  independence  of  this  quar- 
ter of  America.  Massachusetts  suffered  most ; 
and  her  charter,  like  the  franchises  of  London, 
was  vacated  on  a  writ  of  quo  warranto.     Charles 


THE   COMMONWEALTH.  199 

died  in  1685,  and  his  brother,  James  II.,  succeeded 
him.  In  July,  1686,  Governor  Treat  received 
two  writs  of  quo  warranto  against  the  colony  of 
Connecticut,  issued  the  previous  year,  calling  upon 
it  to  show  title  for  its  exercise  of  political  powers 
or  abandon  them.  In  December  came  another. 
In  both  cases,  according  to  the  colony's  subse- 
quent letter  to  King  William,  the  time  set  for  ap- 
pearance had  elapsed  before  the  serving  of  the 
writ,  so  that  the  colony  could  make  no  defense, 
as  perhaps  was  intended ;  but  an  attorney  was  ap- 
pointed, and  every  preparation  made  for  what  re- 
sistance was  possible.  Andros  had  been  succeeded 
by  Dongan  as  governor  of  New  York  in  1682  ; 
and  the  king  was  represented  in  New  England  by 
Joseph  Dudley,  a  recreant  Massachusetts  man,  as 
president  of  the  royal  commissioners.  Dudley  un- 
doubtedly did  part  of  his  work  by  endeavoring  to 
persuade  Connecticut  to  surrender  her  charter 
peaceably  to  the  crown,  promising  to  exert  all  his 
influence  to  procure  her  one  equally  favorable. 
The  colony  was  not  to  be  cajoled :  aware  of  her 
impotence  for  open  resistance,  she  followed  her 
traditional  policy,  arguing  and  expostulating, 
never  yielding  a  jot,  but  not  resorting  to  action 
until  the  time  for  action  was  fully  come. 

In  December,  1686,  the  Hartford  authorities 
were  called  upon  to  measure  their  strength  again 
with  their  old  antagonist.  Andros  had  landed  at 
Boston,   commissioned   as  governor   of   all   New 


200  CONNECTICUT. 

England,  and  bent  on  abrogating  the  charters. 
Following  Dudlej^'s  lead,  he  wrote  to  Treat,  sug- 
gesting that  by  this  time  the  trial  of  the  writs  had 
certainly  gone  against  the  colony  ;  and  that  the 
authorities  would  do  much  to  commend  the  colony 
to  his  majesty's  good  pleasure  by  entering  a  for- 
mal surrender  of  the  charter.  The  colony  author- 
ities were  possibly  as  well  versed  in  the  law  of  the 
case  as  Andros,  and  they  took  good  care  to  do 
nothing  of  the  sort ;  and,  as  the  event  showed, 
they  thus  saved  the  charter. 

The  assembly  met  as  usual  in  October,  1687 ; 
but  their  records  show  that  they  were  in  profound 
doubt  and  distress.  Andros  was  with  them,  accom- 
panied by  some  sixty  regular  soldiers,  to  enforce  his 
demand  for  the  charter.  It  is  certain  that  he  did 
not  get  it,  though  the  records,  as  usual,  are  cau- 
tious enough  to  give  no  reason  why.  Tradition  is 
responsible  for  the  story  of  the  charter  oak.  The 
assembly  had  met  the  royal  governor  in  the  meet- 
ing-house ;  the  demand  for  the  charter  had  been 
made ;  and  the  assembly  had  exhausted  the  re- 
sources of  language  to  show  to  Andros  how  dear 
it  was  to  them,  and  how  impossible  it  was  to  give 
it  up.  Andros  was  immovable  ;  he  had  watched 
that  charter  with  longing  eyes  from  the  banks  of 
the  Hudson,  and  he  had  no  intention  of  giving  up 
his  object  now  that  the  king  had  put  him  in  power 
on  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut.  Toward  even- 
ing the  case  had  become  desperate.     The  little 


THE    COMMONWEALTH.  201 

democracy  was  at  last  driven  into  a  corner,  where 
its  old  policy  seemed  no  longer  available ;  it  must 
resist  openly,  or  make  a  formal  surrender  of  its 
charter.  Just  as  the  lights  were  lighted,  the  legal 
authorities  yielded  so  far  as  to  order  the  precious 
document  to  be  brought  in  and  laid  on  the  table 
before  the  eyes  of  Andros.  Then  came  a  little 
more  debate.  Suddenly  the  lights  were  blown 
out ;  Captain  Wadsworth,  of  Hartford,  carried  off 
the  charter,  and  hid  it  in  a  hollow  oak-tree  on  the 
estate  of  the  Wyllyses,  just  across  the  "  riveret ;  " 
and  when  the  lights  were  relighted,  the  colony  was 
no  longer  able  to  comply  with  Andros's  demand  for 
a  surrender.  Although  tlie  account  of  the  affair 
is  traditional,  it  is  difficult  to  see  any  good  grounds 
for  impeaching  it  on  that  account.  It  supplies, 
in  the  simplest  and  most  natural  manner,  a  blank 
in  the  Hartford  proceedings  of  Andros  wiiich 
would  otherwise  be  quite  unaccountable.  His 
plain  purpose  was  to  force  Connecticut  into  a  po- 
sition where  she  must  either  surrender  the  charter 
or  resist  openly.  He  failed :  the  charter  never 
was  in  his  possession  ;  and  the  official  records  as- 
sign no  reason  for  his  failure.  The  colony  was 
too  prudent,  and  Andros  too  proud,  to  put  the 
true  reason  on  record.  Tradition  supplies  the  gap 
with  an  exactness  which  proves  itself. 

Having  done  all  that  men  could  do.  Treat  and 
his  associates  bowed  for  the  time  to  superior  force. 
Andros  was  allowed  to  read  his  commission,  and 


202  CONNECTICUT. 

Treat,  Fitz-Jolin  and  Wait  Wintlirop,  and  Joliu 
Allyn  received  appointments  as  members  of  his 
council  for  New  England.  John  Allyn  made 
what  the  governor  doubtless  considered  to  be  the 
closing  record  for  all  time.  But  it  is  noteworthy 
that  the  record  was  so  written  as  to  flatter  An- 
dres's vanity,  while  it  really  put  in  terms  a  decla- 
ration of  overpowering  force,  on  which  the  com- 
monwealth finally  succeeded  in  saving  her  charter 
from  invalidation.      It  is  as  follows  : 

"At  a  General  Court  at  Hartford,  October 
31st,  1687,  his  excellency.  Sir  Edmund  Andross, 
knight  and  Captain  General  and  Governor  of  His 
Majesty's  territories  and  dominions  in  New  Eng- 
land, by  order  of  His  Majesty  James  the  Second, 
King  of  England,  Scotland,  France,  and  Ireland, 
the  31st  of  October,  1687,  took  into  his  hands 
the  government  of  the  colony  of  Connecticut,  it 
being  by  His  Majesty  annexed  to  Massachusetts 
and  other  colonies  under  his  excellency's  govern- 
ment. ,,  „ 
"  FINIS." 

The  government  was  destined  to  last  far  longer 
than  either  the  governor  or  his  government.  But, 
while  it  lasted,  Andros's  government  was  bitterly 
hated,  and  with  good  reason.  The  reasons  are 
more  peculiarly  appropriate  to  the  history  of 
Massachusetts,  where  they  were  felt  more  keenly 
than  in  Connecticut ;   but  even   in  Connecticut, 


THE  COMMONWEALTH.  203 

poor  as  was  the  field  for  plunder,  and  distant  as  it 
was  from  the  *'  ring  "  which  surrounded  Andros, 
the  exactions  of  the  new  system  were  wellnigh 
intolerable  to  a  people  whose  annual  expense  of 
government  had  been  carefully  kept  down  to  the 
lowest  limits,  so  that,  says  Bancroft,  they  "  did 
not  exceed  four  thousand  dollars  ;  and  the  wages 
of  the  chief  justice  were  ten  shillings  a  day  while 
on  service."  The  feeling  in  Connecticut  is  well 
represented  in  the  story  of  the  answer  made  to 
Andros  himself,  when  he  asked  somewhat  suspi- 
ciously for  the  reason  of  the  proclamation  of  a  fast- 
day  :  "  Sir,  this  kind  goeth  not  out  but  by  prayer 
and  fasting."  There  were  not  lacking  incitements 
to  premature  insurrection  ;  there  were  letters 
from  hot-headed  friends  in  England,  telling  them 
that  they  were  "  but  a  company  of  hens  "  if  they 
did  not  revive  their  charter  by  force;  and  the 
Andros  party  had  private  intelligence  implicating 
various  leaders  in  some  vague  plot  for  a  revolt. 
But  the  people  were,  as  ever,  self-restrained.  The 
letters  of  Treat  and  Allyn  to  Andros  are  models  of 
courtesy,  as  of  faithful  stewards  who  thought  only 
of  his  interests.  The  colony  waited  patiently  for 
the  precise  moment  when  it  could  strike  most  ef- 
fectively, and  then  it  struck  once  and  for  all,  with 
all  the  strength  that  was  in  it. 

April,  1689,  came  at  last.  The  people  of  Bos- 
ton, at  the  first  news  of  the  English  Revolution, 
clapped   Andros  into  custody.     May  9,  the  old 


204  CONNECTICUT. 

Connecticut  authorities  quietly  resumed  their  func- 
tions, and  called  the  assembly  together  for  the 
following  month.  William  and  Mary  were  pro- 
claimed with  great  fervor.  Not  a  word  was  said 
about  the  disappearance  or  reappearance  of  the 
charter ;  but  the  charter  government  was  put  into 
full  effect  again,  as  if  Andros  had  never  inter- 
rupted it.  An  address  was  sent  to  the  king,  asking 
that  the  charter  be  no  further  interfered  with; 
but  operations  under  it  went  on  as  before.  No  de- 
cided action  was  taken  by  the  home  government 
for  some  years,  except  that  its  appointment  of  the 
New  York  governor,  Fletcher,  to  the  command  of 
the  Connecticut  militia,  implied  a  decision  that  the 
Connecticut  charter  had  been  superseded.  Late 
in  1693,  Fitz  John  Winthrop  was  sent  to  England 
as  agent  to  obtain  a  confirmation  of  the  charter. 
He  secured  an  emphatic  legal  opinion  from  Attor- 
ney General  Somers,  backed  by  those  of  Treby 
and  Ward,  that  the  charter  was  entirely  valid, 
Treby's  concurrent  opinion  taking  this  shape :  "  I 
am  of  the  same  opinion,  and,  as  this  matter  is 
stated,  there  is  no  ground  of  doubt."  The  basis  of 
the  opinion  was  that  the  charter  had  been  granted 
under  the  great  seal ;  that  it  had  not  been  surren- 
dered under  the  common  seal  of  the  colony,  nor  had 
any  judgment  of  record  been  entered  against  it ; 
that  its  operation  had  merely  been  interfered  with 
by  overpowering  force  ;  that  the  charter  therefore 
remained  valid ;  and  that  the  peaceable  submission 


THE  COMMONWEALTH.  205 

of  the  colony  to  Andros  was  merely  an  illegal  sus- 
pension of  lawful  authority.  In  other  words,  the 
passive  attitude  of  the  colonial  government  had 
disarmed  Andros  so  far  as  to  stop  the  legal  pro- 
ceedings necessary  to  forfeit  the  charter  ;  and  then 
prompt  action,  at  the  critical  moment,  secured  all 
that  could  be  secured  under  the  circumstances. 
William  was  willing  enough  to  retain  all  possible 
fruits  of  James's  tyranny,  as  he  showed  by  enforc- 
ing the  forfeiture  of  the  Massachusetts  charter  ;  but 
tlie  law  in  this  case  was  too  plain,  and  he  ratified 
the  lawyers'  opinion  in  April,  1694.  The  charter 
had  escaped  its  enemies  at  last,  and  its  escape  is  a 
monument  of  one  of  the  advantages  of  a  real  democ- 
racy. For  fifty  years,  every  man  in  the  common- 
wealth had  felt  the  maintenance  of  the  common- 
wealth to  be  his  own  personal  concern,  and  had  been 
willing  not  only  to  die  for  it,  but  to  live  for  it,  work 
for  it,  and  exercise  the  highest  sort  of  self-control 
for  it.  Out  of  this  mass  there  had  been  evolved  a 
class  of  representative  men,  who  were  in  the  highest 
degree  capable  of  seeing  and  doing  just  what  was 
needed.  Democracy  had  done  more  for  Connecticut 
than  class  influence  had  done  for  Massachusetts. 

The  settlement  of  the  boundaries  of  the  colony 
was  a  longer  and  more  fruitful  source  of  dissension 
than  the  legal  government.  On  the  west,  the 
agreement  of  1664  was  superseded  in  1683  by  a 
new  one  between  Connecticut  and  Governor  Don- 
gan  of  New  York,  Andros's   successor,  in  which 


206  CONNECTICUT. 

the  quadrilateral,  at  the  southwest  corner  of  Con- 
necticut, first  makes  its  appearance.  It  was  agreed 
that  the  starting  point  of  the  line  should  be  Lyon's 
Point,  at  the  mouth  of  "  Byram  Brook,"  between 
the  towns  of  Rye  and  Greenwich  ;  thence  up  that 
brook  to  the  "  wading  place,"  where  the  common 
road  crossed  it  ;  thence  eight  English  miles  north- 
northwest  into  the  country  ;  thence  easterly  to  a 
line  parallel  to  the  first,  begi lining  twelve  miles 
east  of  Lyon's  Point  as  the  Sound  runs,  and  to 
a  place  in  that  line  eight  miles  from  the  Sound ; 
thence  along  this  north-northwest  line  to  a  point 
twenty  miles  from  the  Hudson  ;  thence  northerly 
to  the  Massachusetts  border,  by  a  line  "  parallel  to 
Hudson's  River  in  every  point."  If  the  quadrilat- 
eral first  described  came  at  any  point  nearer  than 
twenty  miles  to  the  Hudson,  the  other  northerly 
lines  were  to  be  run  so  much  further  to  the  east- 
ward as  to  give  New  York  an  equivalent  tract  of 
land.  This  threw  Rye  into  New  York,  and  recog- 
nized New  York's  old  claim  that  Connecticut  was 
to  come  no  nearer  to  the  Hudson  than  twenty 
miles'  distance.  It  also  gave  up  the  line  agreed 
upon  in  1664,  running  north-northwest  from  Ma- 
maroneck,  crossing  the  Hudson  near  West  Point, 
and  leaving  the  district  east  of  it,  including  New- 
burgh,  Poughkeepsie,  and  Kingston,  under  Con- 
necticut. It  has  since  been  rectified  in  various 
points,  and  the  proposed  line  parallel  to  the  Hud- 
son has  been  straightened,  but  otherwise  it  is  the 


THE  COMMONWEALTH.  207 

basis  of  the  present  line.  Rye  revolted  to  Con- 
necticut in  1697 ;  but  the  king's  confirmation  of 
the  line  of  1683  in  1700  forced  the  town  to  return 
to  New  York.  The  whole  line  was  established  by 
survey  in  1725  and  1731,  re-surveyed  by  New 
York  in  1860,  agreed  upon  by  both  States  in  1878 
and  1879,  and  ratified  by  congress  in  1880-81.  It 
should  be  added  that  the  unnatural  junction  of 
Long  Island  with  New  York  in  1664  carried  with 
it  the  island  called  Fisher's  Island,  off  the  south- 
east corner  of  Connecticut,  which  had  been  granted 
to  Winthrop  by  Connecticut  in  1641;  and  it  thus 
gave  the  southern  boundary  of  Connecticut  its  odd 
appearance,  running  from  the  mouth  of  Pawcatuck 
River,  at  the  eastern  end  of  the  Sound,  to  the  cen- 
ter of  the  East  River,  at  the  western  end. 

The  northern  boundary  of  the  colony  was  not 
fully  settled  for  more  than  a  century.  When  Con- 
necticut was  settled,  the  Massachusetts  southern 
line  was  in  the  air  ;  and  in  1642  that  colony  sent 
two  men.  Woodward  and  Saffery,  to  run  the  line 
according  to  the  charter.  The  surveyors  are  said  to 
have  been  ignorant  men ;  and  Connecticut  author- 
ities call  them  lucus  a  non  lucendo,  "  the  mathe- 
maticians." They  began  operations  by  finding 
what  seemed  to  them  a  point  "  three  English  miles 
on  the  south  part  of  the  Charles  River,  or  of  any 
or  every  part  thereof  :  "  thence  the  southern  Mas- 
sachusetts line  was  to  run  west  to  the  Pacific 
Ocean.     The  two  mathematicians,  however,  either 


208  CONNECTICUT. 

hesitating  to  undertake  a  foot  journey  to  the  Pa- 
cific, or  doubting  the  sympathy  of  casual  Indians 
with  the  advancement  of  science,  and  being  sufiB- 
ciently  learned  to  know  tbat  two  points  are  enough 
to  determine  the  direction  of  a  line,  did  not  run 
the  line  directly  west.  Instead,  they  took  sbip, 
sailed  around  Cape  Cod  and  up  the  Connecticut 
Kiver,  and  found  wbat  they  asserted  to  be  a  point 
in  the  same  latitude  as  the  first.  In  fact,  they  had 
got  some  eight  miles  too  far  to  the  south,  thus  giv- 
ing their  employers  far  too  much  territory ;  but 
they  had  fulfilled  their  principal  duty,  which  was 
to  show  that  Springfield  was  in  Massachusetts. 
An  ex  parte  survey,  and  of  such  a  nature,  could 
not  of  course  be  recognized  by  Connecticut.  The 
oblong  indentation  in  Connecticut's  northern  boun- 
dary is  a  remnant  of  the  ignorance  of  Woodward 
and  Saffery  ;  for  Massachusetts  claimed  a  line  run- 
ning just  north  of  Windsor,  and  Connecticut  finally 
reclaimed  all  but  this  oblong.  She  made  ex  parte 
surveys  of  her  own  in  1695  and  1702,  and  then 
both  colonies  appealed  to  the  crown.  This  was 
evidently  a  dangerous  tribunal  for  both ;  and  in 
1714  they  agreed  on  a  compromise  line  much  as  it 
is  at  present.  Connecticut  received,  in  return  for 
her  concessions,  107,000  acres  of  wild  land  in  Mas- 
sachusetts, which  was  sold  for  about  82,500  and 
the  proceeds  given  to  Yale  College.  As  surveys 
became  still  more  accurate,  it  was  found  that  the 
present  towns  of  Enfield,  Suffield,  and  Woodstock, 


THE   COMMONWEALTH.  209 

which  had  fallen  to  Massachusetts  by  the  agree- 
ment of  1714,  were  really  south  of  the  Ihie,  so 
that  Massachusetts  was  governing  territory  outside 
of  her  charter  limits.  In  1749  Connecticut  ac- 
cepted the  petition  of  these  towns  to  be  restored 
to  her  jurisdiction,  and  they  have  since  been  Con- 
necticut towns.  Massachusetts  continued  to  claim 
the  towns,  but  did  not  attempt  to  enforce  the 
claim  until  1804,  when  she  finally  abandoned  it. 
In  1822  and  1826,  the  line  was  run  as  it  now  is, 
leaving  the  indentation  to  Massachusetts,  perhaps 
as  a  memorial  to  Woodward  and  Saffery. 

"  How  the  boundary  on  the  east  was  ever  fixed," 
says  Bowen,  "  seems  a  puzzle  ;  "  and  he  cites,  very 
appropriately,  Rufus  Choate's  description  of  it  in 
one  of  its  stages :  "  The  commissioners  might  as 
well  have  decided  that  the  line  between  the  States 
was  bounded  on  the  north  by  a  bramble  bush,  on 
the  south  by  a  bluejay,  on  the  west  by  a  hive  of 
bees  in  swarming  time,  and  on  the  east  by  five 
hundred  foxes  with  firebrands  tied  to  their  tails." 
Connecticut  claimed  all  the  Narragansett  country, 
up  to  Narragansett  Bay,  by  conquest  from  the 
Pequots ;  and  Massachusetts,  on  the  ground  of  her 
essential  assistance  to  Connecticut,  claimed  a  divi- 
sion of  the  spoils.  Rhode  Island  was  considered 
an  unchartered  nonentity  by  both.  In  1658  the 
New  England  commissioners  really  gave  judgment 
against  Connecticut,  assigning  the  Mystic  River  as 
the  boundary  between  Massachusetts  and  Connec- 
14 


210  CONNECTICUT. 

ticut,  thus  handing  over  the  whole  of  Rhode  Island 
and  the  eastern  part  of  the  present  State  of  Con- 
necticut to  the  Bay  colony.  The  present  town- 
ship of  Stonington  thus  became  a  Massachusetts 
town,  and  was  called  Southerton  ;  and  the  Ather- 
ton  Company,  a  Massachusetts  association,  whose 
leader,  Captain  Atherton,  had  bought  large  tracts 
of  land  in  Rhode  Island  from  the  Indians,  and 
which  had  acknowledged  the  jurisdiction  of  Con- 
necticut, now  passed  under  that  of  Massachusetts. 
The  Connecticut  charter  in  1662,  by  carrying  that 
colony  up  to  Narragansett  Bay,  instead  of  clearing 
matters  up,  complicated  them  still  further.  Rhode 
Island  then  had  an  agent  in  London,  soliciting  a 
charter,  which  was  granted  in  1663 ;  and  it  assigned 
as  the  western  boundary  of  that  colony  the  Pawca- 
tuck  River  from  its  mouth  to  its  source,  and  thence 
a  due  north  line  to  the  Massachusetts  boundary. 
To  prevent  a  conflict,  Winthrop  had  made  an 
agreement  with  the  Rhode  Island  agent,  which 
was  made  a  part  of  the  Rhode  Island  charter,  that 
the  Pawcatuck  River  should  receive  the  additional 
title  of  "  alias  Norrogansett  or  Narrogansett 
River  ;  "  and  that,  wherever  the  Connecticut  char- 
ter spoke  of  the  Narragansett  River,  the  Pawca- 
tuck River  should  be  taken  and  deemed  to  be  the 
one  intended  !  Connecticut  at  once  repudiated 
this  action  of  Winthrop  as  ultra  vires,  erected  a 
town  government  at  Wickford,  and  set  the  all- 
penetrating  power  of  the  Connecticut  constable  to 


THE  COMMONWEALTH.  211 

work  there.  Then  followed  a  period  of  great  con- 
fusion, Rhode  Island  arresting  Connecticut  town 
officers,  and  vice  versa,  in  the  disputed  territory, 
and  Connecticut  preparing  to  make  her  claims 
good  by  force,  for  the  New  England  commission- 
ers in  1664  had  decided  the  dispute  in  her  favor. 

In  the  mean  time,  Randolph's  royal  commis- 
sioners, whose  history  in  New  England  was  that  of 
a  common  and  public  nuisance,  took  the  Narragan- 
sett  dispute  under  consideration  in  1665,  without 
giving  the  parties  any  hearing  or  notice  of  it,  and 
decided  it  in  their  usual  impartial  fashion.  They 
decided  that  neither  Connecticut  nor  Rhode  Island 
had  the  slightest  claim  to  the  territory  in  dispute  ; 
and  they  took  it  away  from  both,  and  erected  it 
into  a  separate  territory,  to  be  known  as  the  King's 
Province,  belonging  solely  to  his  majesty.  The 
title  of  the  Atherton  Company  to  their  land  pur- 
chases was  decided  in  the  same  summary  way :  it 
was  adjudged  null  and  void,  and  the  settlers  were 
ordered  to  leave  the  King's  Province.  It  adds  to 
the  oddity  of  the  decisions  that  no  one  seems  to 
have  asked  the  commissioners  to  interfere. 

The  country  in  dispute  was  in  reality  almost  a 
wilderness,  with  very  few  settlers.  Connecticut 
therefore  allowed  the  Randolph  decision  to  go  with 
a  protest,  until  it  became  obsolete  as  the  royal 
commissioners  faded  like  an  unhappy  dream  out 
of  New  England's  memory.  From  time  to  time 
she   appointed   commissioners   to   meet  those   of 


212  CONNECTICUT. 

Rhode  Island,  though  the  meetings  came  to  noth- 
ing. Proclamations  and  arrests  enlivened  the  lot 
of  the  lonely  dwellers  in  the  Narragansett  coun- 
try; but  settlement  was  retarded  by  the  knowl- 
edge that  the  settler  had  to  buy  into  a  lawsuit  of 
the  most  vexatious  character.  Rhode  Island  south- 
west of  Providence  was  thus  practically  unset- 
tled except  by  Indians,  when  the  events  of  King 
Philip's  war  embittered  the  controversy  by  rein- 
forcing the  feeling  of  Connecticut  men  that  the 
Narragansett  country  rightfully  belonged  to  them 
by  conquest  as  well  as  by  charter.  Their  soldiers 
had  fought  in  the  swamp  fight  at  Kingston,  where 
the  power  of  Philip  was  broken  ;  their  patrolling 
parties  had  afterwards  scoured  the  country,  and 
swept  it  of  Narragansetts  ;  and  all  the  time  Rhode 
Island  had  looked  idly  on,  and  had  never  struck  a 
blow  for  the  coveted  territory,  for  her  neighbors 
or  for  herself.  After  renewed  confusion,  a  new 
set  of  royal  commissioners,  in  1633,  decided  every 
point  in  the  Narragansett  controversy  in  favor  of 
Connecticut.  The  prospect  for  Rhode  Island  was 
therefore  dark.  All  of  its  present  territory  west 
of  Narragansett  Bay  and  southwest  of  Providence 
had  been  adjudged  to  Connecticut.  All  east  of 
the  bay,  if  the  grounds  of  this  decision  were  to 
hold  good  as  a  precedent,  belonged  to  Plymouth. 
And  Massachusetts,  to  the  north,  was  in  waiting 
with  a  variety  of  claims,  and  a  general  willingness 
to  act  as   residuary  legatee  of  the  late  colony  of 


THE   COMMONWEALTH.  213 

Rhode  Island.  It  must  have  seemed  certain  that 
the  existence  of  the  stout  little  colony  was  to  be 
limited  to  its  first  fifty  years,  and  that  its  time  had 
come.  But  its  salvation  came  from  the  inability 
of  its  enemies  to  agree.  The  decision  of  the  com- 
missioners was  not  confirmed  or  considered  by  the 
home  government,  owing  to  the  troublous  times 
of  James  II. ;  and  Rhode  Island  was  enabled  to 
deny  its  weight  altogether.  Then  came  Andros, 
who  took  Rhode  Island's  view  of  the  case,  and  put 
her  into  possession  of  the  disputed  territory.  She 
held  to  it,  in  spite  of  intermittent  attempts  of  Con- 
necticut to  exercise  jurisdiction  over  it,  and  in 
spite  of  a  decision  of  the  English  attorney  general 
in  1696  in  favor  of  Connecticut.  Indeed,  her  per- 
sistency, and  the  ugly  possibility  of  an  appeal  to 
England  for  a  general  decision,  began  to  incline 
Connecticut  to  a  modification  of  her  claims.  Un- 
der the  charter  of  Rhode  Island,  her  western  boun- 
dary was  to  be  the  Pawcatuck  River  to  its  head, 
and  thence  due  north  to  the  Massachusetts  line. 
If  the  Pawcatuck  River  be  followed  up  to  its  source, 
as  still  given  on  Rhode  Island  maps,  that  point 
will  be  found  in  a  pond  just  east  of  where  the 
swamp  fight  took  place,  near  Kingston,  within  a 
half  dozen  miles  of  Narragansett  Bay.  A  line  due 
north  from  this  point  would  pass  just  west  of 
Providence,  and  would  leave  Rhode  Island  only  a 
narrow  strip  of  territory  on  the  west  shore  of  the 
bay.     Connecticut,   giving  up  her   first   claim  to 


214  CONNECTICUT. 

abut  on  the  bay,  now  held  to  a  literal  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Rhode  Island  charter ;  and  it  is  not 
easy  to  see  how  her  legal  claim  to  the  bulk  of  the 
disputed  soil  could  be  gainsaid.  Rhode  Island, 
however,  was  really  fighting  for  her  life  ;  and  her 
struggle  was  so  persistent  that  Connecticut  at  last 
abandoned  her  old  claim.  In  1703  commissioners 
from  both  colonies  agreed  to  follow  the  Pawcatuck 
River  up  to  a  branch  called  the  Ashaway,  thence 
a  straight  line  to  a  point  twenty  miles  due  west  of 
the  extremity  of  Warwick  Neck  in  Narragansett 
Bay,  the  northwest  corner  of  the  Atherton  tract, 
and  thence  due  north  to  the  Massachusetts  line. 
A  subsequent  attempt  of  Rhode  Island  to  revive 
her  ancient  claim  to  the  Mystic  River  as  her  west- 
ern boundary  led  Connecticut  to  renew  her  resist- 
ance to  the  settlement  of  1703 ;  but  the  English 
board  of  trade  in  1723  reported  in  favor  of  the 
moral  claim  of  Rhode  Island,  and  showed  a  disposi- 
tion to  make  the  dispute  an  excuse  for  uniting  the 
two  colonies  in  a  royal  government.  Connecticut 
therefore  joined  in  1727-28  in  running  the  line  of 
1703,  which,  slightly  straightened  in  1840,  has 
since  remained  the  boundary.  The  legal  grounds 
of  Connecticut's  claim  seem  to  have  been  good ; 
but  common  justice  to  the  different  relations  to 
the  territory  in  dispute,  which  was  vital  to  Rhode 
Island  and  only  important  to  Connecticut,  and 
common  justice  also  to  the  obstinate  fight  made 
by  the  smaller  colony,  may  fairly  give  reason  for 


THE  COMMONWEALTH.  216 

satisfaction  in  the  final  settlement.  But  it  should 
not  be  forgotten  that  this  was  a  case  in  which  the 
smaller  colony,  if  sufficiently  determined,  as  Rhode 
Island  evidently  was,  had  a  great  advantage.  She 
was  ready  to  risk  everything  on  an  appeal  to  Eng- 
land ;  for,  if  she  lost  this  territory  in  default  of  an 
appeal,  she  had  little  else  to  live  for.  In  every 
crisis  of  the  controversy,  therefore,  Rhode  Island 
had  a  weapon  in  reserve  to  which  Connecticut  had 
no  shield,  for  the  last  thing  she  wished  was  to 
come  again  under  the  general  jurisdiction  of  an 
English  tribunal :  she  had  too  many  larger  inter- 
ests, outside  of  the  Narragansett  country,  which 
such  a  tribunal  would  undoubtedly  bring  into 
question,  while  Rhode  Island  had  hardly  anything 
else  to  risk.  This  weapon,  brought  promptly  and 
resolutely  into  play  by  Rhode  Island  whenever  it 
was  necessary,  gave  her  a  victory,  to  which  she 
was  fairly  entitled  by  circumstances,  at  any  rate. 
Two  disputes  as  to  the  soil  of  the  colony  remain 
to  be  stated.  In  1635,  just  before  the  council  of 
Plymouth  disbanded  it  undertook  to  divide  up  the 
whole  of  New  England  into  eight  parcels,  which  it 
distributed  among  its  members.  The  only  one 
which  gave  any  annoyance  to  Connecticut  was  that 
of  the  Marquis  of  Hamilton,  running  from  the 
mouth  of  the  Connecticut  River  to  Narragansett 
Bay,  and  extending  sixty  miles  back  into  the  coun- 
try. Hamilton  sent  over  an  agent  to  examine  his 
grant;   but,  being  a  royalist,  he  was  unable  to 


216  CONNECTICUT. 

make  any  serious  effort  to  colonize  during  the  com- 
monwealth period.  At  the  Restoration,  his  wife, 
now  Duchess  of  Hamilton,  opposed  the  charter  of 
Connecticut ;  and  her  claims  were  referred  to  the 
royal  commissioners  for  New  England,  who  re- 
ported against  them  in  1665,  but  in  1683  referred 
a  new  claim  to  the  king.  The  ground  taken  by 
Connecticut  was  mainly  that  of  limitation,  —  that 
the  Hamilton  family,  having  utterly  neglected 
to  prosecute  their  claim  to  the  territory  for  far 
longer  than  twenty  years,  and  until  others  had 
settled  and  improved  it,  were  debarred  from  en- 
tering it  now.  On  this  ground,  endorsed  in  1696 
by  the  law  officers  of  the  crown,  the  council  of  trade 
finally  decided  in  favor  of  Connecticut  in  1697. 

The  other  case,  which  kept  the  colony  in  trou- 
ble for  years  and  was  finally  extinguished  by  the 
Revolution  without  any  real  decision,  was  the 
claim  of  the  Mohegan  Indians.  John  Mason,  one 
of  the  founders  of  Windsor,  afterwards  settled 
at  Saybrook,  was  the  military  man  of  the  colony. 
The  records  generally  refer  to  him  as  "  the  Ma- 
jor." After  the  Pequot  war,  he  and  his  family 
seem  to  have  had  an  hereditary  friendship  for  the 
Mohegans,  which  was  a  burden  to  the  white  par- 
ties to  it.  The  Mohegans  seem  to  have  made 
treaties  of  land  cession  with  prodigal  generosity 
when  drunk,  and  to  have  lied  about  them  circum- 
stantially when  sober.  In  1640  they  ceded  their 
lands  to  Connecticut  by  an  instrument  which  gave 


TEE   COMMONWEALTH.  217 

that  colony  power  to  establish  plantations  where 
it  would,  reserving  certain  lands  to  the  Indians, 
and  agreed  to  prevent  other  whites  from  settling 
in  their  territory  without  the  consent  of  the  Con- 
necticut magistrates.  The  territory  covered  New 
London  county  and  part  of  Windham ;  and  it 
would  be  difficult  to  frame  a  more  complete  trans- 
fer than  that  made  by  the  Indians.  Mason  settled 
at  Norwich,  in  the  Mohegan  country,  in  1659. 

Two  different  stories  were  told  by  the  Indians 
about  the  deed  of  1640.  One  was  that  it  was 
given  to  Mason  by  Uncas  when  the  latter  was  at 
war  with  the  Narragansetts ;  and  that  it  was  only 
to  be  used  by  Mason  if  Uncas  were  conquered;  as 
he  was  not.  This  story  was  varied  from  time  to 
time  by  another,  quite  inconsistent  with  the  first, 
but  less  severe  upon  their  friend  Mason.  It  was 
that  the  deed  of  1640  was  understood  by  them 
as  a  mere  trusteeship  in  Mason,  as  a  man  who 
understood  the  English  people  and  English  law, 
and  could  maintain  the  rights  of  the  Indians. 
Mason's  name  is  not  even  mentioned  in  the  deed. 
Nevertheless  Mason  seems  to  have  accepted  this 
version. 

In  1671,  the  year  before  his  death,  acting  as  if 
the  deed  of  1640  had  been  made  to  him  as  trustee 
instead  of  to  the  colony  of  Connecticut  specifically, 
Mason  deeded  back  a  large  tract  to  them,  entailing 
it  upon  them  and  making  it  inalienable.  In  1680, 
again,  Uncas  obtained  from  Connecticut  a  confir* 


218  CONNECTICUT. 

mation  of  his  remaining  lands,  expressly  resigning 
all  jurisdiction  over  all  of  them.  Within  a  year 
or  two  he  died ;  his  tribe  was  split  into  fragments ; 
it  was  impossible  to  trace  any  legitimacy  of  blood ; 
and  the  Indian  claims  fell  into  confusion  worse 
confounded.  The  grandson  of  Mason,  and  the 
son  of  Mr.  Fitch,  the  minister  of  Norwich,  who 
were  fast  friends  of  the  Indians,  made  their  cause 
their  own,  and  in  1705  they  brought  it  to  trial  be- 
fore a  royal  commission,  headed  by  Governor  Dud- 
ley of  Massachusetts,  and  composed  of  his  party. 
The  trial  was  a  curious  one.  If  there  was  any 
cause  of  action  for  the  plaintiffs,  it  was  impossible 
to  find  it;  the  judges  were  determined  to  make 
the  case  a  point  of  attack  on  the  charter  of  Con- 
necticut ;  and  the  defendant  protested  and  refused 
to  appear,  on  the  ground  that  the  commission  had 
no  powers  to  adjudicate  the  colony's  title  to  exist- 
ence. The  commission  decided  against  Connec- 
ticut, and  the  colony  appealed  to  the  crown.  From 
that  time  the  case  dragged  along  until  the  Revo- 
lution, decided  again  and  again  in  favor  of  the 
colony,  and  appealed  by  the  Mason  family,  whose 
personal  interests  had  become  interwoven  with 
the  Mohegan  claims.  After  the  Revolution,  the 
Indians,  content  with  the  State's  reservation,  made 
no  further  movement  to  reopen  the  case. 

The  commonwealth,  its  legal  existence  having 
been  maintained  and  secured  and  its  boundaries 
established,  had  a  quiet  and  generally  uneventful 


THE   COMMONWEALTH.  219 

history  so  long  as  peaceful  relations  with  the 
mother  country  were  kept  up.  Buttressed  on  all 
sides  by  other  colonies,  as  in  King  Philip's  war,  it 
suffered  little  from  the  colonial  wars  except  in 
men.  But  its  immunity  from  immediate  danger 
had  no  effect  in  checking  its  readiness  to  make 
common  cause  with  the  other  colonies.  Soldiers 
were  provided  freely  by  the  colony,  and  did  their 
part  manfully.  But  the  brief  story  of  Connec- 
ticut's colonial  wars  will  fall  better  under  the 
financial  history  with  which  they  are  closely  con- 
nected. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

ECCLESIASTICAL  AEFAIRS.      1636-1791. 

It  was  probably  inevitable,  under  the  circum- 
stances of  time  and  place,  that  the  first  effort  to 
establish  a  democratic  commonwealth  should  be 
complicated  with  an  ecclesiastical  system  entirely 
foreign  to  its  real  nature.  Religious  homogeneity 
almost  compelled  it.  To  the  first  settlers  in  Con- 
necticut, though  not  for  the  same  reason  as  in 
New  Haven,  civil  and  ecclesiastical  affairs  were 
convertible  terms.  The  township  and  the  church 
were  coterminous :  the  town,  by  which  term,  as 
distinguished  from  the  territorial  township^  was 
meant  the  body  of  voters  within  the  township, 
settled  civil  and  ecclesiastical  affairs  indifferently 
in  the  same  town  meeting ;  and  as  about  all  the 
voters  were  at  first  church  -  members  and  agreed 
closely  in  creed  and  methods,  the  dual  system 
produced  little  friction  for  a  time.  It  was  inevi- 
table that  lapse  of  time  should  disturb  the  origi- 
nal homogeneity  and  bring  trouble.  The  effort  in 
New  Haven  to  put  off  the  evil  day  by  the  practi- 
cal absorption  of  the  state  in  the  church  led  to  the 
downfall  of  the  commonwealth.     The  long  contin- 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  221 

ued  efforts  in  Connecticut  to  reconcile  church  and 
state  under  a  free  town  system  gave  rise  to  diffi- 
culties whose  history  might  fill  volumes,  and  task 
the  learning  of  an  expert  in  church  history.  Ma- 
ther, no  mean  expert,  said  of  one  of  the  opening 
struggles  that  its  origin  was  as  obscure  as  that  of 
the  Connecticut  River.  The  attempt  of  a  mere 
layman  to  penetrate  such  a  labyrinth  must  neces- 
sarily be  hazardous  ;  and  we  are  to  venture  in 
no  further  than  relation  is  found  to  the  peculiar 
development  of  the  commonwealth. 

It  will  easily  be  seen  that  a  reconciliation  be- 
tween churches  which  acknowledged  no  earthly 
master,  and  a  commonwealth  legislature  whose 
final  authority  was  to  be  supreme,  was  a  work  of 
no  little  difficulty.  The  long  and  comparatively 
successful  maintenance  of  the  concordat  in  Con- 
necticut seems  to  have  been  due  to  the  character 
of  Hooker  and  the  impress  which  he  left  on  the 
ecclesiastical  traditions  of  the  colony.  He  and 
Davenport  were  fair  types  of  the  methods  of  the 
two  colonies.  Both  were  masterful  men,  even  for 
that  time.  Davenport  applied  his  force  directly, 
and  failed.  Hooker  relied  on  influence,  and  suc- 
ceeded. Most  of  Hooker's  successors,  in  spite  of 
an  occasional  slip  into  direct  aggression,  followed 
his  methods  with  like  success.  With  no  official 
voice  in  legislation,  and  no  direct  appeal  even  to 
their  arbitration,  there  was  hardly  an  important 
piece  of  legislation  which  was  not  tested  by  their 


222  CONNECTICUT. 

approval  or  disapproval ;  and  it  is  to  their  honor 
that  they  were  content  with  the  substance  of 
power,  based  on  the  confidence  of  their  people. 
Only  this  mutual  confidence  made  the  concordat 
possible.  Many  an  act  of  the  general  assembly, 
which  seems  an  interference  with  the  liberty  of 
the  churches,  was  based  in  reality  on  the  tacit 
approval  of  the  ecclesiastical  element  of  the  col- 
ony. They  were  the  voice  of  the  ecclesiastical, 
speaking  through  the  civil  power. 

At  the  beginning,  the  Connecticut  and  New 
Haven  churches  alike  were  Congregational  and 
Calvinistic.  Each  church  claimed  complete  con- 
trol of  its  own  affairs.  In  cases  of  doubt  or  dis- 
pute, it  would  submit  to  the  decision  of  a  council 
of  neighbor  or  allied  churches  ;  but  the  selection 
of  the  churches  which  were  to  form  the  council 
was  always  a  matter  for  mutual  agreement,  or 
fresh  disputes,  between  the  two  parties.  The 
church  knew  no  superior.  It  was  begun  by  a 
common  agreement  in  articles  of  faith  by  those 
who  proposed  to  become  members.  The  ceremony 
of  the  selection  of  the  "  seven  pillars,"  already 
described,  was  peculiar  to  the  churches  of  New 
Haven,  Milford,  and  Guilford,  and  seems  to  have 
been  in  their  cases  an  expedient  of  the  leaders  for 
the  establishment  of  their  politico-ecclesiastical 
system.  A  well-organized  Connecticut  church 
was  at  fii'st  supposed  to  have  two  ministers.  One 
was  the  pastor,  whose  duties  were  mainly  the  ex- 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  223 

hortation,  encouragement,  and  pastoral  care  of  the 
members ;  the  other  was  the  teacher,  whose  work 
was  the  doctrinal  defense  of  the  church  and  the 
instruction  of  its  people.  The  ruling  elder  was 
the  executive  officer  of  the  church ;  but  its  success 
depended  largely  on  the  cooperation  of  the  ruling 
elder  with  the  pastor.  The  functions  of  the  dea- 
cons were  those  which  have  always  been  familiar 
in  those  officers.  Back  of  all  of  them  was  the 
vote  of  the  church,  a  Calvinistic  democracy,  un- 
defined in  its  powers,  and  ready,  on  occasion,  to 
claim  the  full  powers  of  an  ecumenical  council. 
When  the  union  had  been  completed,  there  were 
fifteen  of  these  churches  in  the  colony  :  the  Long 
Island  churches,  organized  in  the  same  way,  had 
passed  under  the  dominion  of  New  York. 

The  first  churches  were  mostly  small.  Those 
of  Hartford  and  New  Haven  were  of  course  the 
largest.  The  church  of  Wethersfield,  when  it 
split  and  the  defeated  party  removed  to  Stamford, 
numbered  but  seven  communicants,  the  orthodox 
majority  numbering  four  and  the  heterodox  mi- 
nority three.  Pierson's  church  at  Southampton, 
on  Long  Island,  numbered  but  sixteen.  This 
paucity  of  numbers,  however,  was  due  to  the 
promptness  of  the  first  settlers  in  organizing  their 
churches.  The  church  really  began  with  the  set- 
tlement. The  first  item  in  the  Norwalk  town 
records  provides  for  the  restraint  of  wandering 
swine  ;  the  second,  for  the  erection  of  a  minister's 
house  ;  the  third,  for  a  pound. 


224  CONNECTICUT. 

The  first  great  church  dispute,  which  rent  the 
Hartford  church  from  1654  until  1659,  has  been 
so  complicated  with  the  names  of  the  actors  and 
with  doctrinal  points,  that  one  who  is  not  a  pro- 
found theologian  can  hardly  make  anything  of  it. 
There  are  indications,  however,  that  an  explana- 
tion may  be  found  in  the  effort  to  accommodate 
the  original  church  and  state  system  to  the  chang- 
ing conditions  of  the  people,  and  that  the  actors, 
however  prominent,  were  merely  floating  on  the 
surface  of  opposing  currents  whose  nature  even 
they  did  not  understand  quite  clearly.  Three 
points  are  of  interest :  the  church  establishment ; 
the  connection  of  church  and  state,  or  rather 
town ;  and  the  change  in  the  people,  with  its  ef- 
fects. 

The  first  code  of  Connecticut,  in  1650,  required 
that  all  persons  should  be  taxed  for  church  as  well 
as  for  state  ;  and  the  taxes  for  support  of  the  min- 
ister, and  for  other  ecclesiastical  purposes,  were  to 
be  levied  and  collected  like  other  taxes.  So  long 
as  a  trace  of  the  establishment  lasted,  even  down 
to  the  adoption  of  the  constitution  of  1818,  the 
connection  with  the  civil  power  continued.  The 
church  society  used  the  civil  tax  lists  in  levying  its 
rates  ;  the  conditions  of  suffrage  in  society  meet- 
ings were  the  same  as  in  civil  town  meetings  ;  and 
the  penalties  for  voting  by  unqualified  persons 
were  the  same.  The  civil  power  collected  the 
taxes  for  the  church  by  distraint.     If  the  church 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  225 

refused  or  neglected  to  support  its  minister,  the 
general  assembly  settled  the  proper  rate  of  main- 
tenance and  enforced  it  on  the  church ;  and  if  a 
church  remained  without  a  minister  for  more  than 
a  year,  the  general  assembly  could  name  a  proper 
amount  for  ministerial  purposes,  and  compel  the 
church  to  raise  and  expend  it.  The  principle  of 
such  connection  was  the  ecclesiastical  system  of 
the  commonwealth  from  1639  down  to  1818  ;  and 
the  successive  "  enfranchisements  "  of  other  sects 
were  simply  permissions  to  them  to  use  the  secular 
arm  according  to  what  had  been  at  first  the  special 
privilege  of  the  establishment. 

Considering  the  churches  recognized  in  1650 
as  established,  the  commonwealth  forbade  any 
persons  to  form  a  new  church  within  the  colony 
without  consent  of  the  general  court  and  of  the 
neighboring  churches.  The  man,  therefore,  who, 
not  being  a  member  of  one  of  the  established 
churches,  found  himself  within  the  territory  of 
a  church,  was  unable  to  vote  in  purely  church 
matters  ;  but  he  was  compelled  to  vote  taxes  and 
pay  taxes  for  the  support  of  a  minister  in  whose 
call  he  had  had  no  voice.  From  their  estab- 
lishment, the  churches  had  been  strict  in  regard 
to  baptism,  and  their  inquisitions  into  the  per- 
sonal experience  of  candidates  for  membership 
were  searching.  As  the  numbers  increased  of 
those  who  could  not  respond  to  such  inquisitions 
and  were  thus  barred  from  the  church,  dissatis- 

15 


226  CONNECTICUT. 

faction  must  have  increased  with  them.  It  often 
took  the  shape  of  coanplaints  that  the  children  of 
such  persons  were  refused  baptism ;  but  it  may 
be  suspected  fairly  that  the  natural  wish  to  share 
in  the  control  of  the  church  whose  expenses  they 
helped  to  pay  had  a  great  deal  to  do  with  it. 
Either  the  right  of  suffrage  must  be  restricted  to 
church -members,  or  all  the  voters  must  be  let 
into  the  church.  In  New  Haven,  church-member- 
ship had  swallowed  democracy ;  in  Connecticut, 
was  democracy  to  swallow  church-membership? 

The  Cambridge  platform,  adopted  by  a  council 
of  the  New  England  churches  held  at  Cambridge, 
Mass.,  in  1648,  was  intended  to  be  the  model  for 
the  church  system  of  New  England,  and  it  governed 
the  Connecticut  churches  for  sixty  years.  Its  im- 
portance was  more  in  its  recognition  of  church  in- 
dependence than  in  any  formulation  of  a  creed. 
But,  in  spite  of  its  recognition  of  church  indepen- 
dence, there  was  in  it  the  seed  of  state  interference, 
so  far  at  least  as  Connecticut  churches  were  con- 
cerned, for  it  insisted  "  that  the  magistrate  is  to 
see  that  the  ministry  be  duly  provided  for."  In 
Connecticut  the  magistrate  was  really  the  town  ; 
and  the  town's  democracy  would  hardly  be  willing 
to  support  the  church  without  at  least  trying  to 
control  it.  The  attempt  was  soon  made  by  the 
general  court,  as  the  mouthpiece  of  all  the  towns, 
in  the  course  of  its  efforts  to  settle  the  Hartford 
difl&culty. 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  227 

In  February,  1657,  the  general  court  called  for 
a  council  of  the  New  England  churches  at  Boston, 
to  consider  certain  propositions  of  the  general 
court.  The  object  of  these  propositions  was  well 
understood  to  be  the  widening  of  church-member- 
ship. The  New  Haven  churches  rejected  the  sugges- 
tion of  such  a  council,  and  the  purely  independent 
element  in  Connecticut  sympathized  with  them, 
for  the  decision  of  such  a  council  looked  straight 
to  state  interference  as  a  means  of  enforcing  it. 
Nevertheless  the  council  met,  and  sustained  the 
new  rather  than  the  old  view.  It  declared  that 
baptized  infants  were  bound,  on  arriving  at  years 
of  discretion,  to  "  own  the  covenant  "  and  become 
formal  church-members  ;  and  that  the  church  was 
bound  to  accept  them,  if  they  were  not  of  scandal- 
ous life  and  understood  the  grounds  of  religion, 
and  was  bound  to  baptize  their  children,  thus  con^ 
tinning  the  chain  of  claims  to  church-membership 
to  all  generations.  This  made  church-membership 
rather  an  affair  of  the  head  and  of  morals  ;  and  it 
was  deeply  execrated  by  the  New  Haven  churches, 
and  by  at  least  a  strong  minority  of  the  Connecti- 
cut churches,  for  it  really  gave  every  baptized  per- 
son a  voice  in  church  government.  It  was  com- 
monly known  as  the  Half-way  Covenant. 

In  1664  the  general  court  formally  approved  the 
council's  decision,  and  "  commended  "  it  to  the 
churches  under  its  jurisdiction,  which  now  covered 
New  Haven.     So  far  as  it  ventured  to  do  so,  the 


228  CONNECTICUT. 

general  court  thus  made  the  Half-way  Covenant, 
■with  its  loose  system  of  admission  to  the  church, 
the  ecclesiastical  law  of  the  commonwealth.  But 
it  was  from  the  first  a  political  rather  than  an 
ecclesiastical  idea ;  it  never  was  welcome  to  the 
Connecticut  churches,  and  some  of  them  never 
accepted  it. 

To  return  now  to  the  Hartford  difficulty,  which 
had  been  woven  into  every  step  of  the  progress 
toward  the  Half-way  Covenant.  Its  nominal  be- 
ginning was  after  the  death  of  Hooker  in  1647. 
Goodwin,  the  ruling  elder,  wanted  Michael  Wig- 
glesworth  as  Hooker's  successor ;  and  Stone,  the 
surviving  minister,  refused  to  allow  the  proposition 
to  be  put  to  vote.  The  Goodwin  party,  twenty- 
one  in  number,  including  Deputy  Governor  Web- 
ster, withdrew  from  the  church  ;  the  Stone  party 
undertook  to  discipline  them  ;  a  council  of  Con- 
necticut and  New  Haven  churches  failed  to  recon- 
cile the  parties  ;  the  general  court  kindly  assumed 
the  office  of  mediator,  and  succeeded  in  making  both 
parties  furious  ;  and  finally  a  council  at  Boston  in 
1659  induced  the  Goodwin  minority,  now  some 
sixty  in  number,  to  remove  to  Hadley,  Mass. 

A  larger  struggle  followed  Stone's  death  in  1663. 
There  were  now  two  young  men.  Whiting  and 
Haynes,  in  the  places  of  Hooker  and  Stone ;  and 
the  new  incumbents,  in  addition  to  their  opposi- 
tion to  one  another,  seem  to  have  been  about 
equally  tactless.      Haynes  headed  the   Half-way 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  229 

Covenant  party.  He  was  supported  by  the  church, 
and  the  ratification  of  this  form  of  church  disci- 
pline by  the  general  court  in  1664  strengthened  his 
position.  Whiting,  with  those  who  still  held  to 
the  pi'imitive  doctrine  of  the  necessity  of  individual 
experience  and  strict  investigation  of  it  before  ad- 
mission to  the  church,  was  compelled  to  remain  in 
a  church  which  must  have  seemed  to  him  and  his 
party  almost  a  heterodox  body.  Five  years  of  this 
sort  of  life  was  necessary  to  convince  both  parties 
of  the  necessity  of  a  compromise. 

In  May,  1669,  the  general  court  advised  that  all 
persons  approved  in  law  and  sound  in  the  funda- 
mentals of  the  Christian  religion  should  "have 
allowance  of  their  persuasion  and  profession  in 
church  ways  ;  "  that  is,  that  they  should  have  lib- 
erty to  constitute  another  church  within  the  town 
limits.  This  innovation  had  evidently  become  in- 
evitable. In  October,  Mr.  Whiting  appeared  be- 
fore the  court,  applied  for  permission  to  form  a 
new  church,  and  received  it.  The  Second  Church 
of  Hartford  was  thus  formed  the  next  year  by  Mr. 
Whiting  and  thirty-one  families ;  and  the  first 
breach  in  the  original  identity  of  town  and  church 
was  accomplished.  Further,  as  the  members  of 
the  new  church  necessarily  received  the  privilege 
o£  diverting  their  share  of  the  taxes  to  the  support 
of  their  own  church,  the  principle  of  this  more 
democratic  precedent  guided  the  slow  emancipa- 
tion of  all  the  other  sects  down  to  1818.     But  it 


230  CONNECTICUT. 

is  not  a  little  odd  to  find  that  the  new  church, 
founded  as  a  protest  against  the  Half-way  Cove- 
nant, adopted  that  practice  from  its  very  first 
meeting. 

However  unwillingly  the  churches  might  accept 
the  Half-way  Covenant,  it  could  not  but  affect 
their  church -membership  very  seriously.  The 
number  of  "  strict  Congregationalists  "  steadily  de- 
creased, while  the  number  of  "  large  Congregation- 
alists," leaning  to  Presbyterianism,  was  as  steadily 
increasing.  "  A  church  without  a  bishop,  and  a 
state  without  a  king,"  was  still  the  theory;  but 
the  state  had  now  a  regulator  in  the  shape  of  a 
supreme  legislature,  and  this  was  enough  to  bring 
about  a  desire  for  a  similar  regulator  for  the 
church.  The  general  court  evidently  leaned  to- 
ward a  council  of  the  churches,  much  after  the 
fashion  of  a  Presbyterian  synod,  as  a  fly-wheel 
to  keep  the  churches  in  harmony  on  points  of  fun- 
damental importance,  while  allowing  disagreement 
on  minor  points.  The  ministers  had  been  in  the 
habit  of  holding  neighborhood  meetings,  and,  after 
the  union,  county  meetings  ;  but  these  were  volun- 
tary, and  their  proceedings  were  limited  to  the 
special  objects  for  which  they  had  been  called. 
This,  however,  was  a  germ  for  an  establishment ; 
and  the  absolute  power  of  individual  churches  ^to 
decide  upon  the  qualifications  of  candidates  for  the 
ministry,  and  certain  scandals  resulting  therefrom, 
furnished  the  occasion. 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  231 

In  1708  the  general  court  directed  that  the 
churches  of  each  county  should  send  their  minis- 
ters and  "  messengers,"  or  lay  representatives,  to 
meet  at  their  county  town  ;  that  the  county  assem- 
blies should  settle  upon  what  they  considered  the 
best  system  of  church  order ;  and  that  delegates 
from  the  county  assemblies  should  meet  at  Say- 
brook,  at  the  coming  Commencement,  to  draw  up 
for  the  general  court's  adoption  a  commonwealth 
church  system. 

The  synod  met  in  September,  adopted  the  Savoy 
Confession  as  modified  by  the  Boston  synod  of 
1680,  and  formed  the  Saybrook  platform  as  an 
ecclesiastical  system  for  the  commonwealth.  It 
directed  that  "  consociations "  of  neighboring 
churches  should  be  formed  in  each  county  ;  that 
a  church,  or  an  excommunicate  person  with  the 
consent  of  the  church,  should  have  the  right  to 
bring  disputes  before  the  consociation ;  that  a 
pastor  or  church  refusing  to  be  bound  by  the  de- 
cision of  the  consociation  should  be  put  out  of 
communion  ;  and  that  there  should  be  an  annual 
meeting  of  delegates  from  all  the  consociations. 
The  scheme  was  at  once  ratified  by  the  general 
court,  and  the  churches  united  by  it  were  "  owned 
and  acknowledged  established  by  law  ;  "  but  per- 
mission was  reserved  to  any  church  to  "  sobei-ly 
differ  or  dissent  from  the  united  churches  hereby 
established."  This  was  about  the  measure  of 
rights  given  to  dissenters  in  England  by  the  act 


232  CONNECTICUT. 

of  1689,  under  William  and  Mary.  The  dissent- 
ing churches  were  to  be  taxed  for  the  support  of 
the  established  churches.  The  establishment  was 
a  modified  Presbyterianism.  There  was  no  formal 
coercive  power  ;  but  the  public  provision  for  the 
minister's  support,  and  the  withdrawal  of  it  from 
recalcitrant  members,  formed  a  coercive  power  of 
no  mean  efficacy.  With  its  adoption,  the  Congre- 
gational churches  of  Connecticut  passed  into  their 
semi-Presbyterian  stage  of  existence ;  indeed,  to- 
ward the  end  of  the  century,  President  Dwight 
uses  the  terms  "  Congregational "  and  "  Presby- 
terian "  as  about  convertible. 

The  Saybrook  platform  brought  order  at  once 
into  the  Connecticut  system ;  but  worse  than  dis- 
order came  with  it.  The  tendency  of  such  an  or- 
derly system  to  a  barren  intellectualism,  difficult 
enough  to  resist  at  the  best,  became  far  stronger 
when  the  church  was  dependent  on  the  state  for 
material  support.  Within  thirty  years,  the  worst 
symptoms  of  a  purely  state  religion  began  to  show 
themselves,  and  it  required  all  the  vitality  of  the 
churches,  and  a  tremendous  internal  convulsion, 
to  banish  them.  The  great  revival  of  1741,  be- 
ginning in  the  church  of  Jonathan  Edwards  at 
Northampton,  Mass.,  and  intensified  by  the  preach- 
ing of  Whitefield,  Gilbert  Tennant,  and  others, 
struck  the  first  blow  at  the  hitherto  secure  position 
of  the  Saybrook  platform.  Wandering  revivalists 
disturbed  many  of  the  ministers,  and  their  com- 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  233 

plaints  found  a  sympathetic  audience  in  the  gen- 
eral court.  That  body  passed  an  act  in  1742 
which  protected  the  churches  rather  more  than 
the  Saybrook  platform  had  given  any  reason  for 
anticipating.  It  forbade  under  penalties  the  en- 
trance of  an  ordained  minister  into  the  parish  of 
another  minister  to  preach  there  without  the  invi- 
tation of  the  settled  minister  and  his  church  ;  it 
increased  the  penalty  in  the  case  of  an  unlicensed 
person ;  and  it  ordered  any  foreigner  or  stranger, 
licensed  or  unlicensed,  who  should  preach  in  vio- 
lation of  the  act,  to  be  sent  as  a  vagrant  from 
"  constable  to  constable  "  out  of  the  colony. 

The  Connecticut  churches  had  changed  very 
much  since  the  time  of  Hooker,  but  not  enough 
to  make  it  likely  that  such  legislation  as  this 
would  pass  unchallenged.  Churches  all  over  the 
colony  became  divided  within  themselves ;  the 
"  new  lights,"  as  the  maintainers  of  freedom  for 
the  new  methods  were  called,  were  hurried  by  zeal 
into  the  most  fantastic  doctrines  and  practices ; 
and  the  colonial  ecclesiastical  system  was  again 
all  at  sea.  One  church  chose  a  minister,  ordained 
him,  quarreled  with  him,  silenced  him,  cast  him 
out  of  the  church,  and  delivered  him  up  to  Satan, 
and  all  within  the  space  of  a  year.  The  extrav- 
agance of  the  new  lights  afforded  the  "  old  lights  " 
a  fair  opportunity  of  proceeding  to  extremes  with 
a  good  grace.  General  court  and  assembly  joined 
in   arresting,   excommunicating,   and  prosecuting 


234  CONNECTICUT. 

ministers  who  violated  the  act  and  church-mem- 
bers who  went  to  hear  them.  When  Whitefield 
made  a  second  tour  through  the  colony  in  1745, 
the  general  court  even  denounced  him  by  resolu- 
tion as  a  promoter  of  errors  and  disorders,  and 
cautioned  the  ministers  not  to  admit  him  to  their 
pulpits,  and  church-members  not  to  listen  to  him. 
Before  1748,  the  different  consociations  had  ex- 
pelled about  all  the  "  new  lights "  among  their 
ministers,  one  of  the  consociations  remarking  com- 
placently in  one  case  that  it  had  now  blown  out 
one  new  light,  and  that  it  meant  to  keep  on  until 
it  had  blown  out  all  the  rest. 

Meanwhile  separations  among  the  churches  had 
gone  on  apace.  When  a  minister  was  disbarred 
by  any  of  the  consociations,  that  portion  of  his 
flock  which  agreed  or  sympathized  with  him  left 
their  church  with  him,  and  organized  a  church  of 
their  own.  When  a  schism  arose  in  a  church  from 
any  cause,  it  was  not  long  before  it  ran  into  some 
phase  of  the  old  and  new  light  controversy,  and  a 
separation  took  place.  There  were  thus  a  number 
of  separate  churches  in  the  colony,  and  their  posi- 
tion was  peculiar.  From  its  foundation,  the  law 
of  the  colony  had  been  that  any  man  who  should 
refuse  to  contribute  according  to  his  ability  to  the 
support  of  the  settled  ministers  should  be  com- 
pelled to  do  so  by  levy  and  distraint,  as  in  the  case 
of  other  taxes.  At  the  same  time,  provision  was 
made,  and  in  1669  and  1708,  as  has  been  said,  was 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  236 

enacted  'into  statute,  that  members  of  unestab- 
lished  churches  might  "  have  allowance  of  their 
persuasion  and  profession  in  church  ways  or  assem- 
blies without  disturbance."  This,  however,  was 
intended  to  secure  quiet  to  licensed  dissenting 
churches,  and  to  enable  members  of  new  Con- 
gregational churches,  when  licensed  by  the  gen- 
eral court,  to  transfer  their  share  of  the  taxes  to 
their  own  ministers.  Unlicensed  Congregational 
churches  were  worse  off  than  either,  for  they  were 
taxed  for  the  support  of  the  Established  churches, 
and  were  open  to  prosecution  besides. 

This  arrangement  had  worked  very  fairly  for 
some  sixty  years.  When  a  separation  took  place, 
as  in  Hartford,  it  was  ratified  by  the  general 
court,  and  the  members  of  the  new  church  paid 
their  rates  only  for  the  support  of  their  own  min- 
ister. No  one  was  legally  a  minister  unless  rec- 
ognized by  the  general  court,  and  then  he  was  en- 
titled to  a  measure  of  state  support.  About  1706 
the  ecclesiastical  calm  had  been  interrupted  by 
the  Church  of  England.  One  of  its  missionaries 
began  to  preach  in  Stratford,  and  in  1722  another 
was  permanently  settled  there.  It  was  but  natu- 
ral that  the  members  of  this  church  should  object 
to  supporting  their  own  minister  and  paying  rates 
for  the  Congregational  minister  as  well ;  and  they 
had  a  strong  disposition  to  appeal  from  the  laws 
of  Connecticut  to  those  of  Great  Britain,  which 
was  the  last  thing  the  colony  wanted.     It  is  a 


236  CONNECTICUT. 

tradition  that  the  establishment  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  in  New  Haven  was  secured  by  an  offer  to 
pay  the  fines  for  dissidence,  coupled  with  a  de- 
mand for  a  copy  of  the  proceedings  for  transmis- 
sion to  the  home  government.  In  1727  the  gen- 
eral court  passed  an  act  which  cut  the  tie  that 
had  so  long  bound  town  and  church  together. 
Hitherto  there  had  been  but  one  church  in  a 
town,  unless  the  general  court  permitted  a  sepa- 
ration. Now  any  society  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land might  be  formed  in  a  town;  its  members 
were  thereupon  excused  from  paying  rates  to  the 
settled  or  Congregational  minister ;  their  obliga- 
tion to  pay  taxes  was  transferred  to  their  own 
minister ;  and  the  old  church  was  to  be  known  as 
the  "  prime  ancient  society."  The  latter,  however, 
still  retained  the  taxing  power  over  all  persons 
not  members  of  any  church.  In  1729  the  act  of 
1727  was  extended  to  cover  the  case  of  Quakers 
and  Baptists. 

The  new  churches  formed  by  the  new-light 
schism  claimed  to  be  Congregational:  the  tyran- 
nical legislation  of  1742  had  taken  them  out  of 
the  scope  of  the  act  of  1669,  and  their  members 
were  still  held  bound  for  taxes  to  support  the  very 
ministers  from  whom  they  had  seceded.  Some 
congregations  became  nominal  Baptists  in  order 
to  get  the  benefit  of  the  act  of  1729.  Others 
simply  refused  to  pay,  and  the  settled  ministers 
put  every  engine  of  the  law  in  motion  against 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  237 

them.  Their  property  was  levied  upon  and  sold 
for  a  small  fraction  of  its  real  value ;  in  default 
of  satisfaction  by  property,  they  \7ere  arrested 
and  taken  to  jail,  with  the  scandalous  accompani- 
ment of  the  scenes  naturally  arising  from  a  vio- 
lent resistance  ;  and  a  faint  flavor  of  the  Inquisi- 
tion began  to  pervade  the  ecclesiastical  system  of 
the  colony.  When  the  cause  of  the  new  lights 
took  this  form,  the  end  was  not  far  distant.  One 
church  after  another,  on  the  occasion  of  almost 
any  dispute  with  its  minister,  took  the  opportu- 
nity to  repudiate  the  Saybrook  platform,  and  to 
reassert  the  primitive  freedom  of  the  churches ; 
the  number  of  malcontents  was  steadily  increas- 
ing; and  about  1780  the  general  court  gave  up 
the  struggle  and  the  Saybrook  platform  together. 
In  1791  it  practically  granted  the  right  of  free  in- 
corporation to  all  religious  bodies  ;  but  persons 
unconnected  with  any  church  were  still  required 
to  pay  rates  to  the  established  Congregational  or- 
ganization until  the  constitution  of  1818  made  all 
such  contributions  voluntary. 

In  spite  of  the  act  of  1727,  other  sects  than  the 
Congregational  were  really  exotics.  It  was  not 
until  1789  that  the  first  Methodist  society  was 
founded  at  Stratford,  where  the  Episcopalians  had 
begun  their  organization.  The  Baptists  and  other 
sects  had  existed  in  small  numbers  ;  but  all  the 
sects  were  weak,  and  membership  in  them  was  to 
some  extent  a  removal  from  the  sympathies  of  the 


238  CONNECTICUT. 

mass  of  the  people.  To  the  Episcopalians,  whose 
church  had  lorded  it  at  home  as  the  Congrega- 
tional church  now  lorded  it  in  Connecticut,  this 
^tate  of  affairs  must  have  been  particularly  exas- 
perating. Their  feeling  of  isolation  was  increased 
by  the  difficulty  which  they  experienced  in  obtain- 
ing a  bishop.  It  was  not  until  178-1  that  Bishop 
Seabury  was  consecrated  by  the  Scottish  bishops, 
having  failed  of  ordination  at  the  hands  of  the 
English  bishops,  on  account  of  the  necessity  that 
the  candidate  should  take  the  oath  of  allegiance 
to  the  crown. 

For  one  reason  or  other,  every  dissenting  sect 
in  Connecticut  had  its  own  grievances,  and  felt 
itself  to  be  more  or  less  an  alien  to  the  common- 
wealth. This  worst  political  feature  of  any  ec- 
clesiastical restriction  showed  itself  again  and 
again  in  local  politics  before  the  Revolution,  still 
more  during  the  Revolution  in  the  development 
of  the  Tory  party  in  the  State ;  and  it  was  the  ba- 
sis of  almost  all  party  opposition  after  the  Revo- 
lution, until,  coalescing  with  the  rising  tide  of  de- 
mocracy, it  overthrew  the  charter  itself  in  1818. 

The  establishment  of  Yale  College,  as  it  was 
an  essential  part  of  the  colony's  ecclesiastical  sys- 
tem, may  best  find  a  place  here.  The  Connecti- 
cut general  court,  in  establishing  a  free-school  sys- 
tem in  1644,  had  done  so  on  the  express  ground 
that  it  was  "  one  chief  project  of  that  old  deluder, 
Satan,  to  keep  men  from  the  knowledge  of  the 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  239 

Scriptures ; "  and  the  selectmen  of  the  towns 
were  cautioned,  as  a  fundamental  part  of  educa- 
tion, to  see  to  it  that  parents  and  masters  gave 
children  weekly  instruction  in  "  some  short  ortho- 
dox catechism."  A  college  was  evidently  needed 
as  the  capstone  to  the  system  ;  and  New  Haven, 
under  the  impulse  of  Davenport,  began  thinking 
of  such  an  institution  in  1641.  It  was  allowed  to 
slumber  because  of  the  protest  of  the  leading  men 
of  the  Bay :  they  urged  that  all  the  resources  of 
all  New  England  were  barely  enough  to  support 
Harvard,  and  that  an  attempt  to  establish  a  new 
institution  would  merely  ruin  both.  In  1652  the 
project  was  formally  given  up  for  the  time,  but 
the  New  Haven  authorities  had  been  directed, 
five  years  before,  to  reserve  one  of  the  home  lots 
for  the  college. 

When  the  time  seemed  to  have  come,  in  1698, 
for  reviving  the  project,  the  general  synod  of  the 
colony  took  the  work  in  hand,  intending  to  call 
the  new  college  "  The  School  of  the  Church." 
During  the  following  year,  the  notion  of  church 
control  was  given  up ;  but  ten  ministers  were 
named  as  trustees.  Their  first  meeting  probably 
took  place  in  the  year  1700  ;  and  it  was  later  in 
the  same  year  that  the  famous  meeting  took  place 
at  Branford,  when  each  minister  laid  upon  the 
trustees'  table  his  contribution  of  books,  saying, 
"  I  give  these  books  for  the  founding  of  a  college 
in  this  colony."     The  whole  number  was  about 


240  CONNECTICUT. 

forty  volumes  :  so  small  was  the  germ  from  which 
has  sprang  one  of  the  great  institutions  of  learn- 
ing of  the  United  States. 

In  October,  1701,  the  general  court  chartered 
the  college,  in  order  to  enable  it  to  hold  lands  and 
receive  gifts  and  bequests ;  and  an  annual  grant 
amounting  to  about  <£60  sterling  was  voted  to  aid 
in  its  support.  The  trustees  fixed  upon  Saybrook 
as  the  place  for  the  college,  and  Abraham  Pierson 
as  its  first  rector.  But  Mr.  Pierson  was  settled 
as  minister  at  Killingworth,  and  his  people  would 
not  consent  to  his  removal.  Until  his  death,  the 
library  and  students  remained  at  Killingworth ; 
but  the  Commencements  took  place  at  Saybrook. 
The  first  of  them  was  on  the  13th  of  September, 
1702,  when  Nathanael  Chauncey,  the  first  grad- 
uate, took  his  degree.  Degrees,  apparently  hon- 
orary, were  given  at  the  same  time  to  four  others 
who  had  already  been  graduated  at  Harvard.  It 
is  a  pleasing  circumstance  to  record  that  a  large 
part  of  the  instruction  of  the  early  classes  had 
been  given  by  the  trustees,  in  default  of  other  in- 
structors. 

Mr.  Pierson  died  in  1707,  and  Mr.  Andrew  was 
chosen  in  his  place.  Part  of  the  students  went  to  • 
his  residence  at  Milford,  and  the  rest  to  Saybrook ; 
and  the  college  was  thus  divided  until  1716. 
When  the  trustees  met  at  the  Commencement  of 
1716,  they  found  the  college  almost  broken  up. 
Divided  instruction  and  government,  aided  by  the 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  241 

eager  struggles  of  other  towns  to  obtain  the  final 
location  of  the  college,  and  crowned  by  an  out- 
break of  smallpox,  had  scattered  the  students  in 
every  direction,  and  there  were  the  germs  of  half 
a  dozen  possible  colleges.  In  October  the  trus- 
tees voted  to  fix  the  college  at  New  Haven,  and 
persisted  in  spite  of  an  opposition  which  divided 
the  whole  colony  and  was  carried  into  colonial 
politics.  In  1717  the  general  court  endorsed  the 
removal,  and  voted  a  grant  to  aid  in  the  erection 
of  buildings.  All  through  these  years,  good  friends 
in  England  had  been  sending  over  books,  the 
foundation  of  the  noble  library  which  is  now  so 
great  an  ornament  to  the  college.  One  of  these 
benefactors  was  Elihu  Yale,  a  man  of  New  Haven 
ancestry,  who  had  gone  into  the  East  India  trade 
and  become  a  "  nabob."  He  had  shown  a  strong 
interest  in  the  college ;  and  it  would  probably  be 
doing  the  excellent  trustees  no  injustice  if  one 
presumes  them  to  have  thought  that  his  interest 
would  be  increased  if  the  institution  were  removed 
to  New  Haven  and  named  after  him.  At  any 
rate,  the  first  Commencement  held  at  New  Haven, 
in  1718,  was  marked  by  the  adoption  of  the  title 
Yale  College,  with  a  dedicatory  memorial  to 
Mr.  Yale.  Yale  started  in  the  race  long  after 
her  rival  at  Cambridge ;  and  it  is  interesting  to 
speculate  on  the  results  of  the  equality  which  she 
would  have  attained  at  the  beginning,  if  Mr.  Yale 
had  been  able  to  carry  out  the  generous  intentions 

16 


242  CONNECTICUT. 

which  he  certainly  felt  for  the  college  which  bore 
his  name.  Unfortunately,  he  died  intestate  before 
he  could  do  what  he  meant  to  do  ;  and  the  college 
received  no  more  aid  from  him.  Never  was  human 
distinction  so  cheaply  purchased  as  that  which  has 
perpetuated  the  otherwise  almost  unknown  names 
of  John  Harvard  and  Elihu  Yale. 

If  a  college  were  a  living  thing,  one  might  fancy 
Yale  drawing  a  long  breath  of  satisfaction  as  it 
struck  its  roots  deep  into  its  new  soil.  It  had 
found  its  proper  place  :  New  Haven  would  not  be 
New  Haven  without  the  college,  nor  would  Yale 
be  quite  Yale  without  New  Haven.  But  its 
troubles  were  by  no  means  over.  The  dissatisfac- 
tion at  the  removal  would  not  down :  there  was 
an  irregular  Commencement  in  progress  at  Weth- 
ersfield  while  the  college  was  receiving  its  new 
name ;  and  an  attempt  by  the  sheriff  to  remove 
the  library  from  Saybrook  led  to  a  riot,  in  which 
many  of  the  books  were  lost.  These  difficulties 
were  healed  by  the  prudence  of  the  general  court, 
and  Timothy  Cutler,  of  Stratford,  was  chosen  rec- 
tor in  Mr.  Andrew's  place.  He  proved  to  be  a 
most  efficient  and  popular  head ;  but  in  1722  the 
good  people  of  the  colony  were  astounded  to  learn 
that  the  new  rector,  one  of  the  tutors,  and  two 
neighboring  ministers,  had  embraced  Episcopacy, 
and  were  going  to  England  to  be  ordained.  They 
carried  out  their  intention,  and  became  the  fathers 
of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  Connecticut.    But  they 


ECCLESIASTICAL  AFFAIRS.  243 

left  the  college  in  distress  ;  and  it  was  not  until 
1725  that  a  successor  to  Mr.  Cutler  was  found,  in 
the  person  of  Rev.  Elisha  Williams.  Under  his 
rectorship  Yale  at  last  began  to  prosper.  Berke- 
ley, subsequently  Bishop  of  Cloyne,  made  his  visit 
to  America,  and  recognized  Yale's  claims  to  a 
leading  educational  place  by  gifts  which  were,  for 
the  time,  very  munificent ;  and  Mr.  Williams  at 
his  resignation  in  1739  left  the  college  firmly  es- 
tablished. 

His  successor,  Rev.  Thomas  Clap,  of  Windham, 
was  the  first  in  the  long  line  of  distinctively  Yale 
presidents.  His  predecessors  had  been  Connecti- 
cut ministers,  set  for  a  time  over  a  special  work. 
He  sank  everything  else  in  his  presidency.  He 
introduced  the  modern  systems  of  cataloguing  the 
library ;  he  formulated  the  laws  and  customs  of 
the  college ;  and  in  1745  he  obtained  a  new  char- 
ter for  "  The  President  and  Fellows  of  Yale  Col- 
lege." The  day  of  the  *'  collegiate  school "  had 
gone  by,  and  the  real  Yale  College  had  fairly  be- 
gun its  career.  In  1750-52  the  general  court 
aided  in  erecting  Connecticut  Hall,  and  allowed 
President  Clap  to  hold  a  lottery  to  complete  the 
work.  In  1755,  when  disputes  connected  in  one 
way  or  other  with  the  new-light  controversy  were 
distracting  the  Connecticut  churches.  President 
Clap  showed  his  executive  ability  and  promptness 
by  establishing  Yale  as  a  separate  church,  thus 
removing  it  from  the  scene  of  active  strife ;  and 


244  CONNECTICUT. 

further,  in  order  to  avoid  any  conflict  over  the 
matter,  he  very  shrewdly  refused  to  ask  the  gen- 
eral court  for  permission,  claiming  the  right,  as  an 
incorporated  college,  to  do  so.  The  opposition  to 
the  college  seized  this  opportunity  to  attack  it 
before  the  general  court,  on  the  ground  that  it  was 
"  too  independent ;  "  but  President  Clap  appeared 
as  its  attorney,  and  defended  it  successfully.  He 
seems  to  have  been  one  of  those  college  presidents 
who,  endowed  by  nature  with  abilities  sufficient 
for  eminence  in  any  department,  have  devoted 
them  all  to  the  development  of  the  college. 

The  college  preacher  who  had  been  called  in 
1755,  Rev.  Naphtali  Daggett,  retained  his  posi- 
tion until  his  death  in  1780,  having  acted  as  pres- 
ident for  a  time  on  the  death  of  Mr.  Clap  in  1767. 
During  his  professorship  in  1779,  the  British  made 
their  attack  on  New  Haven.  Among  the  hasty 
levies  which  went  out  to  oppose  them  was  the 
stout  old  college  preacher,  armed  with  his  shot- 
gun. When  the  others  took  to  their  heels,  he 
stood  his  ground,  loading  and  firing  in  the  most 
unministerial  fashion.  A  British  detachment 
charged  him  and  captured  him  ;  and  the  officer  in 
command  inquired,  not  very  gently,  "  What  are 
you  doing  here,  you  old  fool,  firing  on  his  majes- 
ty's troops  ?  "  "  Exercising  the  rights  of  war," 
said  the  doctor,  grimly.  He  was  to  be  exercised 
in  the  rights  of  war  in  a  different  way.  In  his 
own  words,  "  They  damned  me,  those  who  took 


ECCLESIASTICAL   AFFAIRS.  245 

me,  because  they  spared  my  life.  Thus,  'midst  a 
thousand  insults,  my  infernal  driver  hastened  me 
along  farther  than  my  strength  would  admit  in 
the  extreme  heat  of  the  day,  weakened  as  I  was 
by  my  wounds  and  the  loss  of  blood,  which,  at  a 
moderate  computation,  could  not  be  less  than  a 
quart.  And  when  I  failed  in  some  degree  through 
faintness,  he  would  strike  me  on  the  back  with  a 
heavy  walking-staff,  and  kick  me  behind  with  his 
foot.  At  length,  by  the  supporting  power  of  God, 
I  arrived  at  the  green  in  New  Haven.  ...  I  ob- 
tained leave  of  an  officer  to  be  carried  into  the 
Widow  Lyman's  and  laid  on  a  bed,  where  I  lay 
the  rest  of  the  day  and  the  succeeding  night,  in 
such  acute  and  excruciating  pain  as  I  never  felt 
before." 

President  Ezra  Stiles,  called  in  1777,  was  a 
worthy  successor  to  President  Clap.  He  was  suc- 
ceeded by  Timothy  Dwight  in  1795,  by  Jeremiah 
Day  in  1817,  by  Theodore  D.  Woolsey  in  1846, 
by  Noah  Porter  in  1871,  and  by  Timothy  Dwight 
in  1886.  Modern  Yale  began  under  President 
Dwight,  in  1795.  Able  as  preceding  presidents 
had  been,  he  was  the  first  who  reached  a  really 
national  reputation.  At  the  same  time  the  rising 
opposition  to  Yale  control  in  the  State  reacted  by 
intensifying  its  support,  so  that  it  was  for  the 
time  the  ruling  power.  John  Wood,  in  1802,  thus 
describes  the  political  structure  of  Connecticut, 
from  a  democratic  standpoint :    "  This  State  has 


246  CONNECTICUT. 

not  formed  any  constitution  since  the  Revolution  ; 
but  ancient  superstition  and  the  prejudice  of  cus- 
tom have  established  an  hierarchy,  which  is  di- 
rected by  a  sovereign  pontiff,  twelve  cardinals,  a 
civil  council  of  nine,  and  about  four  hundred  pa- 
rochial bishops.  The  present  priest,  who  may  be 
honored  with  the  appellation  of  pope,  is  Timothy 
D wight,  President  of  Yale  College.  .  .  .  The  an- 
nual Commencement  at  Yale  College  takes  place 
in  September,  a  short  time  previous  to  the  elec- 
tion of  the  legislature.  At  this  time,  the  presi- 
dent is  attended  by  his  twelve  cardinal  members 
of  the  corporation,  the  governor,  the  lieutenant 
governor,  and  seven  other  senior  members  of  the 
first  legislative  house  (which  compose  the  lay 
part),  and  the  greatest  part  of  the  clergy.  On 
this  occasion,  the  governor  and  other  civilians  are 
subordinate  to  the  president,  and  they  feel  deeply 
impressed  with  a  sense  of  their  subordination, 
knowing  that  he  can  kill  or  make  alive  at  the 
next  annual  election,  —  that  he  emphatically  holds 
the  keys  which  command  their  political  damna- 
tion or  salvation.  The  pope,  being  thus  sur- 
rounded by  his  cardinals,  his  civil  councils,  and 
his  parochial  bishops,  determines  the  order  and 
detail  of  the  ensuing  election.  Each  one  returns 
home  with  a  perfect  understanding  of  the  part  he 
is  to  act."  He  then  goes  on  to  draw  a  highly  col- 
ored picture  of  the  manner  in  which  the  clergy, 
the  "  parochial  bishops,"  control  the  elections  un- 
der direction  of  Pope  Dwight. 


ECCLESIASTICAL   AFFAIRS.  247 

All  this  was  but  a  deeply  prejudiced  view  of 
the  feeling  which  Connecticut,  and  particularly 
the  clergy,  were  coming  to  have  toward  the  col- 
lege. The  little  State's  little  college  was  fast  be- 
coming a  national  institution.  Its  former  meagre 
system,  under  which  instruction  was  given  by  the 
president  and  a  few  tutors,  was  giving  place  to 
the  organized  staff  of  professors  which  now  num- 
bers a  hundred.  From  the  beginning  of  this  cen- 
tury, Yale's  development  has  not  only  been  strong, 
natural,  and  healthy :  it  has  also  tended  steadily 
into  university  development.  The  original  col- 
lege has  been  the  nucleus  around  which  have  been 
clustered  successive  coordinated  departments  of 
study.  The  Medical  School  was  added  in  1813; 
the  Theological  School  in  1822  ;  the  Law  School 
in  1824  ;  the  Sheffield  Scientific  School  in  1847 ; 
the  Art  School  in  1864  ;  and  the  Peabody  Mu- 
seum of  Natural  History  in  1866.  In  1886  the 
title  Yale  College  was  changed  to  that  of  Yale 
University.  In  its  sphere,  the  State's  develop- 
ment has  been  limited  by  circumstances,  while 
that  of  the  college  has  been  free  from  necessary 
limitations ;  naturally,  therefore,  the  devotion  of 
the  State  to  the  college  has  not  been  able  to  keep 
up  the  closely  paternal  relations  which  John  Wood 
found  so  exasperating  in  1802.  But  the  State  and 
city  cannot  but  be  proud  of  the  institution  which 
Davenport  conceived.  Clap  preserved,  and  Dwight 
sent  on  its  way  to  its  present  rank  as  a  great  uni- 
versity. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

FINANCIAI.  AFFAIRS.      1640-1763. 

A  DEMOCRACY  usually  finds  its  vulnerable  side 
in  financial  errors,  and  any  decadence  in  the  qual- 
ity of  its  individual  units  is  most  quickly  reflected 
here.  Connecticut's  success  in  repairing  her  own 
blunders  is  an  evidence  that  there  was  at  least  no 
decadence  in  her  colonial  history.  The  common- 
wealth shared  with  the  other  New  England  colo- 
nies the  early  difliculties  arising  from  want  of  me- 
tallic currency,  or  from  clumsy  attempts  to  supply 
the  want  by  various  attractive  but  fallacious  ex- 
pedients. At  first,  the  little  ready  money  which 
the  settlers  brought  with  them  served  for  their 
trade  with  one  another,  while  the  Indian  trade 
was  carried  on  by  means  of  Indian  money.  It 
soon  became  necessary  to  use  the  Indian  money, 
wampum,  wampum  -  peage,  or  simply  peage,  in 
traffic  among  the  whites ;  and  it  passed  current 
at  the  rate  of  six  pieces,  later  four  pieces,  to  the 
penny,  or  a  fathom  for  five  shillings.  The  use 
of  this  was  not  uncommon  even  during  the  early 
years  of  the  next  century.  In  addition,  there  were 
all  sorts  of  substitutes  for  money:    beaver-skins, 


FINANCIAL  AFFAIRS.  249 

codfish,  farm  products,  live  stock,  bullets,  and  nails 
served  either  for  small  change  or  for  large  pay- 
ments. Much  of  the  legislation,  in  Connecticut 
and  in  other  New  England  colonies,  which  has 
been  stigmatized  as  a  sort  of  sumptuary  legisla- 
tion, fixing  prices  for  goods,  was  really  intended 
to  put  a  legal  value  on  them  so  that  they  might 
serve  as  currency,  either  in  liquidating  private 
debts  or  in  paying  taxes.  In  case  of  doubt,  the 
goods  were  "  prysed,"  or  appraised,  by  arbitrators 
selected  by  the  two  parties. 

"  Bay  shillings,"  of  the  Massachusetts  coinage 
of  1652,  became  current  in  Connecticut  soon  after 
their  issue,  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  the  Bay  col- 
ony to  keep  them  at  home.  But  clipping  soon 
put  them  into  doubt,  and  the  colonists  were 
driven  back  to  primitive  substitutes.  The  jour- 
nal of  Mrs.  Knight,  who  passed  through  Connecti- 
cut in  1704,  tells  us  that  there  were  then  in  use 
in  that  colony  four  distinct  sorts  of  currency. 
"  Pay  "  was  barter,  property  at  the  prices  which 
the  general  court  had  affixed  to  it  in  acceptance 
for  taxes  for  that  year.  "  Money  "  was  metallic 
currency,  or  wampum  for  the  token  money.  "  Pay 
as  money "  was  property,  at  rates  fixed  by  the 
parties,  not  by  the  general  court.  "  Trust "  was 
a  price,  with  time  given.  The  court  records  often 
speak  of  the  first  as  "  country  pay,"  not  because 
the  articles  came  from  the  country,  as  one  might 
suppose,  but  because  its  rates  of  value  were  fixed 


250  CONNECTICUT. 

by  the  "  country,"  a  term  often  used  for  the  col- 
ony or  state,  and  that  in  strict  accordance  with 
good  English  precedents.  Payment  "  in  specie  " 
meant  payment  in  articles  specified  by  the  agree- 
ment, or,  in  default  of  that,  in  articles  at  rates 
specified  by  the  general  court's  acts.  It  was  not 
limited  to  money  until  gold  and  silver  were  made 
the  only  legal  tender.  The  "  money "  used  in 
larger  payments  was  mainly  Spanish  pieces-of- 
eight,  that  is,  of  eight  reals,  afterwards  supplanted 
by  the  Spanish  milled  dollar,  each  about  equiva- 
lent to  six  New  England  shillings;  and  the  per- 
sistence of  this  equivalent  value  of  six  shillings  to 
the  federal  dollar  long  afterward  is  a  curious  sur- 
vival of  ancient  values.  As  all  these  substitutes 
varied  in  value  or  in  price,  and  as  the  real  money 
was  generally  of  somewhat  doubtful  quality,  all 
the  difficulties  of  arithmetic  were  added  to  the 
natural  difficulties  of  trade  ;  and,  as  always  hap- 
pens under  such  circumstances,  the  sharpest  and 
least  scrupulous  reaped  all  the  profit,  while  the 
mass  of  the  people,  too  busy  with  other  things  to 
study  the  intricacies  of  finance,  paid  the  piper. 
Not  content  with  this  state  of  affairs,  the  colony 
was  imprudent  enough  to  seek  relief  in  the  thorny 
paths  of  paper  money  emissions.  This  part  of 
the  commonwealth's  history  is  intimately  con- 
nected with  her  wars. 

The  first  set  conflict  of  Connecticut  with  the 
Canadian  French  came  after  the  recovery  of  the 


FINANCIAL  AFFAIRS.  251 

charter.  The  accession  of  William  and  Mary  to 
the  English  throne  had  been  followed  at  once  by- 
war  between  England  and  France,  in  which  the 
colonies  were  involved  without  any  great  desire  for 
it.  Connecticut's  position  was  peculiar.  She  was 
shut  off  from  any  imminent  danger  by  New  York 
and  Massachusetts ;  and  yet  she  was  in  a  position 
from  which  she  could  give  quicker  and  more  ef- 
fective aid  to  the  exposed  settlements  of  those 
colonies  than  their  centres  of  power  could  render. 
Help  from  Hartford  could  reach  Albany  or  the 
towns  of  western  Massachusetts  sooner  than  it 
could  be  sent  from  New  York  or  Boston.  Con- 
necticut was  therefore  usually  at  war  in  defense 
of  her  neighbors  rather  than  of  herself ;  but  her 
aid  was  never  given  grudgingly  or  scantily. 

At  the  first  rumor  of  war,  Connecticut  had  sent 
Captain  Bull  to  Albany  with  a  detachment  for 
the  defense  of  that  place,  and  another  detachment 
to  New  York  city  for  a  similar  purpose.  Leisler 
then  held  New  York  city,  while  the  Albany  dis- 
trict was  in  a  state  of  incipient  rebellion  against 
him.  Suddenly  the  French  and  Indians  burst 
into  Schenectady,  where  no  sufficient  watch  was 
kept,  massacred  the  people,  and  burned  the  place. 
Bull  had  warned  the  people  to  keep  a  better 
watch,  but  to  no  purpose.  Leisler  and  his  oppo- 
nents both  charged  the  calamity  upon  the  false 
security  produced  by  the  intrigues  and  promises 
of  the  opposite  party ;  and  all  the  thanks  received 


252  CONNECTICUT. 

by  Connecticut  came  in  the  form  of  accusations 
by  both  parties  that  she  had  encouraged  the  ras- 
cals of  the  opposition.  There  is  a  good  commen- 
tary on  her  disinterestedness  in  the  fact  that  De 
Callieres'  plan  of  campaign  contemplated  only  an 
attack  on  Albany  and  New  York,  with  no  design 
on  Connecticut. 

In  conjunction  with  the  other  New  England 
colonies  and  New  York,  Connecticut  agreed  to 
take  part  in  the  land  expedition  up  the  Hudson, 
which  was  to  cooperate  with  Governor  Phipps's 
sea  expedition  against  Quebec.  Fitz  John  Win- 
throp  was  placed  in  command  of  the  joint  forces, 
with  Milborn,  Leisler's  son-in-law,  as  commissary. 
Milborn  does  not  seem  to  have  known  enough  to 
provide  food  or  transportation  for  the  army  ;  and, 
in  default  of  these  very  necessary  factors  of  suc- 
cess, Winthrop  was  compelled  to  retreat.  Leisler 
took  the  side  of  his  son-in-law,  heaped  volumes  of 
abuse  upon  Winthrop,  and  finally  ordered  him 
under  arrest.  It  is  said  that  the  Indians  attached 
to  the  army  released  him,  "  to  the  universal  joy 
of  the  army."  The  Connecticut  general  court  ex- 
pressed itself  emphatically  in  his  favor,  and  the 
tone  of  Leisler's  letters  is  enough  to  confirm  their 
judgment.  For  the  remainder  of  the  war,  Con- 
necticut's part  was  confined  to  furnishing  troops 
whenever  any  of  her  neighbors  called  for  them. 

The  case  was  much  the  same  in  Queen  Anne's 
war,  which  broke  out  in  1702,  but  was  aggravated 


FINANCIAL   AFFAIRS.  253 

by  the  prograiume  pursued  by  Governor  Cornbury 
of  New  York,  a  cousin  of  the  queen,  and  Governor 
Dudley  of  Massachusetts.  Dudley's  object  was 
to  unite  all  the  New  England  colonies  under  his 
government ;  but  he  was  shrewd  enough  to  per- 
suade Cornbury  that  he  meant  merely  to  attach 
Connecticut  to  New  York.  So  Connecticut  was 
kept  busy  in  satisfying  the  requisitions  of  her 
neighbor  governors  for  troops  and  material  aid  of 
all  kinds,  while  the  two  governors  were  all  the 
time  planning  to  vacate  the  charter  of  Connecticut. 
A  bill  for  that  purpose  was  brought  before  parlia- 
ment, and  was  only  defeated  by  the  most  untiring 
efforts  of  Ashurst,  the  colony's  agent.  Dudley's 
attempt  to  enforce  the  Mohegan  claims,  already 
mentioned,  was  a  part  of  the  scheme. 

Dudley's  whole  scheme  proved  abortive  in  1705 ; 
and  the  colony  no  doubt  took  great  satisfaction, 
when  he  next  sent  a  request  for  troops  in  1707,  in 
returning  aflat  refusal.  Two  years  after,  in  1709, 
on  a  requisition  from  the  queen  for  three  hundred 
and  fifty  men  to  attack  Quebec,  and  for  four  hun- 
dred more  for  a  land  expedition  against  Montreal, 
Connecticut  promptly  filled  her  quota ;  and  about 
one  hundred  of  her  men  were  among  the  dead  who 
were  the  principal  result  of  the  campaign.  The 
next  year,  three  hundred  men  were  raised  and 
took  part  in  the  capture  of  Port  Royal.  In  the 
following  year,  four  hundred  men  were  raised  to 
give  stupid  Hovenden  Walker  the  pleasure  of 
wrecking  them  in  Canadian  waters. 


254  CONNECTICUT. 

Until  1709  the  colony  had  fought  through  all 
its  work  on  a  money  basis,  raising  or  lowering  the 
tax-rates  from  time  to  time  as  necessity  required 
or  permitted.  Its  limit  had  now  been  reached. 
The  taxes  had  risen  to  seven  or  eight  pence  in  the 
pound,  a  ruinous  rate  for  a  poor  and  struggling 
agricultural  commonwealth,  whose  own  govern- 
mental expenses  were  kept  down  to  the  lowest 
point.  In  June,  1709,  "the  great  scarcity  of 
money,  the  payment  of  the  public  debts  and 
charges  of  this  government,  especially  in  the  in- 
tended expedition  to  Canada,"  led  the  general 
court  to  order  the  issue  of  .£8,000  in  paper  cur- 
rency. It  was  to  be  received  at  a  premium  of  five 
per  cent,  in  payment  of  taxes  ;  no  legal-tender 
clause  was  inserted,  as  in  other  colonies ;  and  a 
special  tax  of  ten  pence  in  the  pound  was  ordered 
for  payment  in  two  annual  parts.  Further  levies 
made  it  necessary  to  order  the  issue  of  ,£11,000 
more  in  the  same  year,  with  the  provision  of  a  tax 
for  payment  in  six  annual  parts.  From  this  time 
the  issues  went  on  with  bewildering  rapidity.  In 
all  cases  it  speaks  well  for  the  underlying  good 
sense  of  the  authorities  that  provision  was  made 
for  special  taxation  for  the  redemption  of  each 
issue ;  but  the  evil  consequences  of  such  issues 
could  not  be  altogether  avoided.  The  original 
avoidance  of  the  legal-tender  feature  lasted  until 
1718,  and  then  it  was  introduced  under  a  bashful 
cover.     Debtors  who  tendered  bills  of  credit  were 


FINANCIAL  AFFAIRS.  255 

relieved  from  execution  and  imprisonment.  Fur- 
ther, counterfeiting  had  become  alarmingly  com- 
mon ;  and  the  general  court  had  come  to  rely  more 
and  more,  in  every  emergency,  on  fresh  emissions 
of  bills  of  credit.  And  in  1733  the  once  cautious 
colony  had  become  so  demoralized  as  to  establish 
what  was  really  a  land-bank,  issuing  £30,000  in 
bills,  and  dividing  the  amount  in  loans  equally 
among  the  five  counties.  In  spite  of  continuous 
efforts  to  provide  in  advance  by  taxation  for  the 
redemption  of  each  issue,  the  balance  against  the 
colony  was  growing  larger ;  the  purchasing  power 
of  the  paper  was  depreciating ;  and,  though  this 
effect  was  disguised  from  most  people  by  the  legal- 
tender  feature,  yet  there  was  not  a  man  in  the  col- 
ony who  could  not  appreciate  it,  as  it  came  in  the 
rise  of  prices  of  commodities  :  silver  rose  in  price 
from  8s.  per  ounce  in  1708  to  18s.  in  1732,  and  to 
32s.  in  1744.  As  usual,  the  price  of  labor  lagged 
behind  in  the  rise,  while  the  price  of  all  that  the 
laborer  ate  or  wore  was  rising  faster,  so  that  the 
laborer  paid  the  cost  of  most  of  the  factitious  in- 
crease of  business.  The  authorities  themselves  be- 
came careless,  so  that,  for  the  first  time  in  its  his- 
tory, the  accounts  of  the  colony  became  so  puzzling 
during  this  period  that  it  is  practically  impossible 
to  make  anything  out  of  them.  The  best  that  can 
be  made  of  them  is  that,  down  to  1740,  ,£156,000 
of  paper  had  been  issued,  but  that  all  but  about 
£6,000  of  this  had  been  redeemed  by  taxation; 


256  CONNECTICUT. 

and  that  there  were  still  outstanding  about  .£33,000 
issued  and  loaned  to  the  various  counties,  making 
about  .£39,000  in  all  for  which  the  colony  was 
now  responsible. 

From  the  time  of  Walker's  luckless  expedition 
there  was  peace  in  the  colony  for  nearly  thirty 
years,  such  peace  as  the  colonists  might  have  had 
nearly  always  but  for  the  fact  of  the  existence 
of  a  "  home  government."  In  1739  this  "  home 
government"  saw  fit  to  declare  a  war  against 
Spain,  which  swept  France  into  its  circle  in  1744, 
and  was  only  ended  by  the  peace  of  Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle  in  1748.  It  was  only  when  the  French  took 
part  in  it  that  the  more  northern  colonies  became 
fully  involved :  until  then,  Oglethorpe  and  the 
new  colony  of  Georgia  bore  the  brunt  of  the  con- 
flict. But  the  northern  colonies  did  not  altogether 
escape :  the  home  government  had  prepared  an 
entertainment  for  them,  in  Admiral  Vernon's  Car- 
thagena  expedition,  more  elaborate  than  Walker's 
and  almost  as  unlucky.  Connecticut  contributed 
her  proportion  of  the  men,  one  thousand  in  num- 
ber, whom  New  England  sent  to  Carthagena,  of 
whom  hardly  a  hundred  returned ;  and  the  ex- 
penses of  the  armament  called  for  a  further  issue 
of  £45,000  in  paper,  X  8,000  to  be  applied  to  the 
redemption  of  former  issues,  or  "  old  tenor,"  and 
£23,000  to  be  loaned  out,  and  the  interest  applied 
to  redemption  purposes.  This  issue  was  called 
"  new  tenor."     In  obedience  to  a  demand  of  the 


FINANCIAL  AFFAIRS.  257 

board  of  trade,  the  legal-tender  provision  was 
struck  out.  The  extension  of  the  war  to  France 
in  1744,  and  the  brilliant  and  successful  expedition 
against  Louisburg,  brought  fi'esh  expense,  which 
Connecticut  met  by  fresh  issues  of  "  new  tenor," 
bringing  her  whole  emissions  for  the  war  up  to  the 
enormous  sum  of  .£131,000,  on  a  tax  valuation  of 
a  little  more  than  X 900,000  in  1T43.  These  bills 
soon  began  to  depreciate  in  their  turn,  but  never 
fell  quite  so  low  as  those  of  the  old  tenor ;  at  the 
worst,  one  of  the  former  was  equal  to  three  and  a 
half  of  the  latter.  Steadily  enforced  taxation,  and 
the  receipt  of  some  X  29,000  in  coin,  which  was 
the  colony's  share  of  the  parliamentary  grant  in 
reimbursement  of  the  expenses,  were  sufficient  to 
wipe  out  the  outstanding  paper,  which  had 
amounted  in  1751  to  about  X  340,000,  reckoning 
both  old  and  new  tenor  in  old  tenor,  as  was  cus- 
tomary. By  1756  the  colony  had  pretty  nearly 
got  rid  of  her  paper.  This  consummation  had 
been  helped  by  an  act  of  parliament  in  1751,  for- 
bidding the  issue  of  legal-tender  paper  and  of  paper 
currency  of  any  kind,  unless  limited  to  the  taxes 
of  the  current  year,  or  secured  by  taxes  payable 
within  five  years.  It  was  also  helped  by  the  more 
uncomfortable  fact  that  the  colony  took  advantage 
of  the  depreciation  of  her  own  paper  to  redeem  it 
at  about  eleven  per  cent,  of  its  face  value. 

Connecticut's    experience  with  the  treacherous 
expedient  of  paper  currency  had  not  been  sufficient 

17 


258  CONNECTICUT. 

to  guard  her  against  all  future  resorts  to  it,  but  it 
was  sufficient  to  save  her  from  its  worst  phases  for 
all  time  to  come.  In  June,  1704,  Queen  Anne  had 
issued  her  proclamation,  stating  a  table  of  values 
for  the  various  foreign  coins  then  current  in  Great 
Britain  and  the  colonies.  Such  money,  at  the 
English  equivalents  there  named,  now  got  the  popu- 
lar name  of  "  proclamation  money,"  or  "  lawful 
money,"  the  state  of  affairs  being  what  would  now 
be  called  a  resumption  of  specie  payments.  Dur- 
ing the  paper  flood,  the  proclamation  had  been 
little  regarded,  but  it  now  came  into  operation. 
When  the  French  and  Indian  war  broke  out,  Con- 
necticut at  once  met  its  initial  expenses  by  the 
issue  of  paper  payable  within  three  years  in  "  law- 
ful money,"  with  interest  at  five  per  cent.,  and 
without  any  legal-tender  clause ;  and  this  policy 
was  followed  steadily  through  the  war.  In  all 
cases,  a  tax  was  laid  to  redeem  each  emission  ;  the 
paper,  being  of  varying  value  according  to  the 
amount  of  accrued  interest,  circulated  very  little  as 
currency  ;  and  there  was  little  depreciation  or  con- 
fusion. The  whole  amount  issued  was  X 359,000, 
and  it  all  seems  to  have  been  paid  at  maturity  or 
before. 

Connecticut  took  her  full  part  in  the  warlike 
operations  for  which  all  these  issues  were  intended. 
She  had  sent  eleven  hundred  of  her  sons,  and  a 
sloop  of  war  of  her  own,  on  the  expedition  to 
Ijouisburg  in  1745,  when  the  colonies,  abandoning 


FINANCIAL  AFFAIRS.  259 

all  reliance  on  the  shiftless  home  government,  sur- 
prised it  and  themselves  by  taking  a  fortress  which, 
by  all  military  rules,  should  have  been  impregnable. 
Her  part  in  the  French  and  Indian  war  has  been 
somewhat  obscured  by  her  strenuous  opposition  to 
the  plan  of  union  devised  at  Albany  in  1754,  at 
Franklin's  suggestion,  as  if  she  had  been  an  ob- 
stacle to  the  efl&cient  prosecution  of  the  war.  The 
plan  proposed  a  general  government  of  the  colonies 
by  a  president-general  and  a  grand  council ;  and 
one  secret  of  Connecticut's  opposition  to  it  seems 
to  have  been  its  provision  that  all  nominations  of 
commissioned  officers,  by  land  and  sea,  should  be 
by  this  central  government.  From  the  time  of 
Andros  down,  every  attack  on  the  charter  of  Con- 
necticut, either  by  the  crown  or  by  neighbor  col- 
onies, had  come  in  the  form  of  an  attempt  to  get 
control  of  the  colony's  militia ;  and  the  colony 
had  come  in  her  turn  to  have  an  almost  fanatical 
determination  to  commission  her  own  officers.  It 
was  this,  rather  than  any  unreasonable  democracy, 
which  led  her  into  opposition  to  the  plan  which 
always  seemed  to  Franklin  the  fairest  that  could 
have  been  devised  for  both  parties. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  war,  Connecticut  was 
called  upon  for  one  thousand  men  as  her  share  of 
the  army  which  was  to  win  the  battle  of  Lake 
George.  The  contingent  of  the  much  larger  colony 
of  Massachusetts  was  but  a  trifle  larger  ;  but  Con- 
necticut not  only  met  the  call  at  once,  but  author- 


260  CONNECTICUT. 

ized  the  governor  to  raise  five  hundred  more,  if 
they  should  be  needed.  Her  senior  officer,,  Phineas 
Lyman,  was  second  in  command  of  the  army,  of 
which  William  Johnson,  of  New  York,  was  com- 
mander in  chief.  The  fortune  of  the  two  halves 
of  the  battle  was  similar  in  one  respect.  Major 
Williams,  of  Massachusetts,  who  commanded  the 
routed  advance  party,  was  killed  almost  at  the  first 
fire  ;  and  it  was  Nathan  Whiting,  a  New  Haven 
officer,  who  rallied  the  men  and  managed  the  re- 
treat to  the  main  body.  Johnson,  having  been 
wounded  enough  to  justify  him  in  retiring,  left 
the  field  at  the  beginning  of  the  main  action  ;  and 
it  was  Lyman,  of  Connecticut,  who  for  five  long 
hours  carried  on  the  fiercest  conflict  then  on  record 
in  colonial  history,  in  which  almost  the  entire 
French  regular  force  was  put  out  of  existence. 
The  real  victor  did  not  have  even  the  satisfaction 
of  seeing  his  name  misspelled  in  the  "  Gazette." 
Johnson,  according  to  President  Dwight,  had  the 
ineffable  meanness  to  ignore  him  altogether  in  his 
report,  and  to  accept  the  honor  of  knighthood  for 
the  victory  which  Lyman  had  won.  The  histories 
have  treated  Lyman  very  much  as  his  superior 
officer  did. 

In  the  unfortunate  campaigns  of  1756  and  1757, 
Connecticut  regularly  raised  more  than  twice  the 
number  of  men  assigned  to  her  as  her  quota. 
Her  men  underwent  every  vicissitude  of  the  war ; 
and  her  public  men  must  have  had  a  training  in 


FINANCIAL  AFFAIRS.  261 

democracy  such  as  their  fathers  had  never  quite 
enjoyed.  In  this  war,  the  characteristics  of  de- 
mocracy and  aristocracy  were  for  the  first  time 
brought  directly  into  contrast  on  American  soil. 
The  Connecticut  democracy  had  produced  a  class 
of  men  of  its  own ;  all  were  tested  as  to  their 
ability,  advanced  as  they  were  competent  to  serve 
the  public,  and  then  kept  in  office  until  they  were 
ready  to  retire  to  a  well-won  old  age.  Rotation  in 
office  and  favoritism  were  equally  incomprehensible 
to  the  Connecticut  mind.  Now  it  was  brought  to 
meet  the  varying  product  of  the  English  aristo- 
cratic system :  sometimes  a  gallant  soldier,  like 
Howe  or  Wolfe  ;  sometimes  a  statesman  of  genius, 
like  Pitt  ;  more  often  an  imbecile,  like  Webb  or 
Loudoun  or  "  Mrs.  Nabbycrombie,"  who  owed  to 
family  or  court  influence  a  position  for  which  Con- 
necticut would  never  have  paid  them  more  than 
one  year's  salary. 

Lyman,  commissioned  as  major  general,  was 
senior  officer  of  the  Connecticut  troops,  and  Whit- 
ing his  second.  Under  them  were  most  of  the  men 
who  afterwards  became  distinguished  as  the  com- 
monwealth's contribution  to  the  defense  of  Ameri- 
can independence,  the  most  prominent  of  whom 
was  Israel  Putnam.  A  native  of  Salem,  Mass.,  of 
which  his  forefather  had  been  one  of  the  first  set- 
tlers, he  had  removed  to  Pomfret,  Conn.,  in  1739, 
and  it  was  near  that  place  that  his  adventure  with 
the  wolf  gave  him  a  reputation  throughout  the  col* 


262  CONNECTICUT. 

ony  for  absolute  fearlessness.  Entering  the  war 
as  a  lieutenant,  he  came  out  with  the  grade  of 
lieutenant  colonel,  having  gained  his  advance,  with 
the  thanks  of  the  colony's  legislature,  through  a 
succession  of  wood-ranging  adventures  which  would 
need  a  volume  for  the  telling.  Lyman,  however, 
would  have  led  Putnam  in  revolutionary  rank  and 
success,  but  for  his  unfortunate  trust  to  court 
honor  and  gratitude.  Going  to  England  in  1763, 
to  secure  a  grant  of  land  for  the  disbanded  soldiers, 
he  lingered  there  for  eleven  years,  in  all  that  hope 
deferred  which  maketh  the  heart  sick  ;  returned 
in  1774,  broken  in  mind  as  well  as  in  spirit ;  and 
died  in  West  Florida  the  following  year. 

The  Connecticut  troops  were  in  all  the  cam- 
paigns of  1758  ;  they  took  their  share  in  the  awful 
butchery  of  Ticonderoga,  and  in  the  second  cap- 
ture of  Louisburg.  The  colony's  efforts  were  so 
exhausting  that,  when  it  was  called  on  for  5,000 
men  in  the  following  year,  it  shrank,  for  the  first 
time,  from  fulfilling  it.  The  general  court  at  first 
resolved  that  it  was  impossible  to  raise  more  than 
3,600  men,  because  of  the  efforts  of  the  past  three 
years,  and  of  the  numbers  of  its  citizens  who  had 
enlisted  in  the  royal  provincial  regiments  or  among 
the  boatmen.  On  the  urgent  request  of  the  gov- 
ernor, the  number  was  increased  to  4,000 ;  and 
another  session,  two  months  later,  finally  raised 
this  to  5,000,  the  number  first  called  for.  The 
encouragement  afforded  by  the  capture  of  Quebec 


FINANCIAL  AFFAIRS.  263 

made  it  easier  to  renew  this  effort  the  next  year ; 
and  in  1761  it  was  called  on  for  but  two  thirds  the 
usual  number.  In  1762  the  colony  was  called  on 
for  1,000  men  for  the  expedition  to  Havana.  Ly- 
man had  command  of  all  the  provincial  forces, 
2,500  in  all ;  and  Putnam  was  now  in  command  of 
Lyman's  own  regiment.  In  this,  as  in  the  expedi- 
tion against  Carthagena,  there  was  a  great  deal  of 
what  was  then  known  as  "  glory : "  wounds,  disease, 
and  death  for  the  many ;  booty,  pleasure,  and  rep- 
utation for  the  few.  Only  a  handful  of  the  men 
who  left  Connecticut  for  the  expedition  ever  re- 
turned ;  and  this  one  event  probably  deprived  the 
colony  of  the  services  of  many  an  officer  whose  ex- 
perience would  have  been  invaluable  twelve  years 
later. 

With  the  close  of  the  French  and  Indian  war, 
Connecticut  was  brought  at  last  into  close  practi- 
cal relations  with  her  sister  colonies :  the  union 
which  she  had  rejected,  through  a  somewhat  ex- 
treme provincialism,  in  1754,  had  been  forced  on 
her  by  circumstances,  although  it  had  not  been  put 
on  paper,  or  definitely  expressed  in  its  terms  ;  for 
that,  a  more  severe  exigency  was  necessary.  But 
the  pressure  of  well-understood  common  necessi- 
ties had  taught  her  people  the  duty  of  unselfish  ex- 
ertion for  the  common  defense.  She  was  now  pre- 
pared, as  she  had  never  been  prepared  before,  to 
take  her  place  as  a  coordinated  commonwealth  in 
an  American  union.   Before  turning  to  the  process 


264  CONNECTICUT. 

by  which  this  was  accomplished,  it  is  proper  to 
notice  the  steps  by  which  the  colony,  which  was 
to  extend  from  Narragansett  Bay  to  the  Pacific 
Ocean,  was  restricted  to  the  limits  with  which  she 
entered  the  Union  under  the  Constitution. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

COMMONWEALTH   DEVELOPMENT.  —  WYOMING 
AND  THE  WESTERN  RESERVE. 

The  century  following  the  grant  and  establish- 
ment of  the  charter  was  a  period  of  quiet  but  al- 
most uninterrupted  growth  for  Connecticut.  Com- 
paratively undisturbed  by  wars  or  by  the  inter- 
ference of  the  home  government,  with  no  royal 
agent  within  her  borders  to  frame  indictments 
against  her  policy  and  methods,  and  to  press  them 
upon  the  king's  attention,  she  went  steadily  on 
her  way  to  that  which  her  people  wanted  most,  — 
the  undisturbed  power  of  gaining  a  livelihood  and 
of  worshiping  God  under  democratic  government. 
Her  charter  had  secured  to  them  most  of  these 
objects ;  the  obstacle  to  the  attainment  of  the 
rest  was  the  unkindly  nature  of  her  soil. 

In  1680  the  colonial  government  sent,  in  answer 
to  a  request  of  the  board  of  trade  for  detailed  in- 
formation, a  statement  of  the  colony's  condition. 
Its  quaint  and  sometimes  apparently  guarded  lan- 
guage carries  in  it  many  indications  of  the  almost 
hopeless  weakness  of  the  colony,  and  of  the  stout 
hearts  of  the  men  who  were  maintaining  it.     The 


266  CONNECTICUT. 

draft  of  the  letter  is  from  the  hand  of  John  Allyn. 
He  estimates  the  fighting  men,  or  "  trained  bands," 
of  the  colony,  at  2,507,  which  might  imply  a  pop- 
ulation of  between  ten  and  twelve  thousand,  or 
about  three  persons  to  the  square  mile,  —  about 
half  the  proportion  of  Nebraska  in  1880.  The  peo- 
ple had  "little  traffique  abroad,"  and  the  bulk  of 
their  trade  was  in  "  sending  what  provissions  we 
rays  to  Boston,  where  we  buy  goods  with  it,  to 
cloath  vs."  The  country  was  mountainous,  full  of 
rocks,  swamps,  hills  and  vales  ;  most  that  was  fit 
for  planting  had  been  taken  up  ;  "  what  remaynes 
must  be  subdued,  and  gained  out  of  the  fire  as  it 
were,  by  hard  blowes  and  for  smal  recompence." 
The  principal  towns  were  Hartford,  New  London, 
New  Haven,  and  Fairfield,  with  twenty-six  smaller 
towns,  in  one  of  which  "  we  have  two  churches." 
The  buildings,  however,  were  not  so  bad,  *'  for  a 
wilderness  ;  "  they  were  of  wood,  stone,  and  brick, 
many  of  them,  says  Allyn  with  pardonable  pride, 
*'  40  foot  long  and  20  foot  broad,  and  some  larger : 
three  and  four  stories  high."  On  second  thoughts, 
Allyn  struck  out  these  latter  specifications,  perhaps 
fearing  that  such  a  picture  of  opulence  might  excite 
the  greed  of  the  home  government.  The  exports 
were  farm  products,  boards,  staves,  and  horses, 
mainly  sent  to  Boston,  but  some  small  quanti- 
ties to  the  West  Indies,  there  to  be  bartered  "  for 
suger,  cotton  wool  and  rumme,  and  some  money." 
Tobacco  was  grown  for  home  consumption.    There 


COMMONWEALTH  DEVELOPMENT.  267 

were  but  twenty  merchants  in  the  colony,  and 
few  of  these  had  a  foreign  trade.  There  were 
very  few  servants,  and  only  about  thirty  slaves, 
imported  from  Barbadoes  at  £22  each.  The 
largest  ship  of  the  colony  was  one  of  ninety  tons*, 
twenty-eight  others  ranged  from  eight  to  eighty 
tons.  Labor  was  scarce  and  dear  ;  wages  were  2s. 
and  2s.  Qd.  a  day  ;  and  provisions  were  cheap, 
so  that  there  was  little  necessity  for  poor  relief. 
Beggars  and  vagabonds  "  were  not  suffered,"  but, 
when  discovered,  were  bound  out  to  service. 
There  were  no  duties  imposed  by  the  colony  on 
exports,  and  only  a  duty  on  imported  wines,  to  be 
used  as  a  school  fund.  The  property  of  the  col- 
ony was  estimated  for  taxing  purposes  at  about 
.£110,000.  But,  in  all  such  estimates,  it  should 
be  remembered  that  about  two  fifths  of  it  was 
more  in  the  nature  of  a  poll-tax,  the  tax  being  in- 
creased according  to  a  somewhat  arbitrary  sched- 
ule of  supposed  wealth  or  position  in  the  various 
trades  and  professions,  so  that  it  took  the  place, 
in  part,  of  an  income  tax  as  well. 

In  spite  of  the  poverty  of  the  colony,  its  vitality 
was  shown  by  the  steady  increase  in  the  number 
of  its  towns.  Allyn  gives  their  number  as  twenty- 
six  in  1680.  Six  of  these,  Lyme,  Haddam,  Sims- 
bury,  Wallingford,  Derby,  and  Woodbury,  had 
been  incorporated  since  the  union  of  the  two  col- 
onies ;  and  three  more,  Waterbury,  Glastenbury, 
and  Plainfield,  were  to  become  towns  before  the 


268  CONNECTICUT. 

end  of  the  century.  In  the  development  of  these 
new  towns  there  were  two  distinct  processes,  ac- 
cording to  the  nature  of  the  case.  A  speculator 
or  a  company  might  buy  lands  from  the  Indians, 
with  the  approval  of  the  general  court,  in  some  lo- 
cality outside  of  the  bounds  of  any  town.  As  soon 
as  the  rates  became  sufficiently  large  to  need  the 
extension  of  the  general  court's  taxing  power  over 
the  little  community,  a  committee  was  appointed 
by  that  body  to  bound  out  the  town  :  it  was  then 
expected  to  choose  constables,  and  send  delegates 
to  the  general  court.  The  other  process  contin- 
ually tended  to  become  the  only  one.  A  town, 
when  first  established,  usually  had  extensive  boun- 
daries. Those  persons  who  settled  in  the  outflying 
districts  of  the  township  found  it  more  and  more 
troublesome,  particularly  in  winter,  to  resort  to 
the  old  church  for  preaching.  "When  there  were 
enough  of  such  dissatisfied  persons  to  support  a 
minister  of  their  own,  they  applied  to  the  general 
court  for  permission  to  form  a  church.  For  the 
church  was  really  a  territorial  term,  quite  as  much 
so  as  the  township  ;  and  the  setting  off  of  a  new 
church  meant  the  diminution  of  the  area  of  the  old 
church,  and  the  inclusion  of  all  persons  within  the 
new  bounds  in  the  new  church.  As  this  involved 
a  diminution  of  the  resources  of  the  old  church,  it 
regularly  met  with  strong  opposition,  and  was 
only  successful  after  several  petitions.  The  erec- 
tion into  a  town  followed  at  the  discretion  of  the 


COMMONWEALTH  DEVELOPMENT.  269 

general  court.  Plainfield  may  be  taken  as  a  com- 
bination of  the  two  processes.  Originally  settled 
as  "  Quinnabaug  plantation,"  it  was  important 
enough  in  1700  to  become  a  town.  The  general 
court  therefore  incorporated  it,  named  it  Plain- 
field,  and  gave  it,  as  was  an  essential  step,  a  spe- 
cial brand  for  its  horses,  in  this  case  a  triangle. 
In  May,  1703,  some  discension  having  arisen,  the 
court  ordered  the  territory  to  be  divided  into  two 
parts,  the  western  settlers  to  pay  their  rates  for  the 
support  of  the  eastern  minister  until  they  had  "  an 
approved  minister  "  of  their  own.  Their  choice 
having  been  approved,  the  general  court  proceeded 
in  October  to  constitute  the  people  of  the  westei'n 
half  of  Plainfield  a  distinct  town,  under  the  name 
of  Canterbury,  with  a  horse  brand  of  its  own. 

The  charter  seems  to  have  contemplated  a  gen- 
eral meeting  of  the  governor,  lieutenant  governor, 
assistants,  and  deputies  as  the  general  assembly, 
still  often  called  the  general  court ;  and  this  was 
the  form  which  its  meetings  at  first  took.  In 
1678  the  court  ordered  that  the  governor,  lieuten- 
ant governor,  and  assistants  should  be  a  council  to 
act  for  the  commonwealth  during  the  recesses  of 
the  court.  This  was  the  prelude  to  the  inevitable 
introduction  of  a  bi-cameral  system.  In  1698  the 
general  court  ordered  that  the  council  should  sit 
as  a  separate  house,  and  the  deputies  as  the  other, 
and  that  laws  should  be  passed  only  by  the  assent 
of  both  houses ;  and  the  arrangement  went  into 


270  CONNECTICUT. 

force  the  next  year.  This  change  was  followed 
by  the  adoption  of  a  doable  capital.  Among  the 
first  measures  of  conciliation  proposed  by  Connec- 
ticut to  induce  New  Haven  to  accept  the  charter 
was  that  New  Haven  should  be  made  a  coordinate 
capital  of  the  commonwealth,  as  well  as  county 
town  of  a  distinct  county.  New  Haven's  rejection 
of  the  terms  caused  the  former  proposition  to 
lapse  for  the  time ;  but  it  was  put  into  force  in 
1701.  It  was  decided  that  the  May  session  of  the 
general  court  should  be  held  hereafter  at  Hart- 
ford, and  the  October  session  at  New  Haven. 
This  arrangement  lasted  until  1873,  when  Hart- 
ford was  again  made  sole  capital. 

The  long  period  of  peace  and  comparative  pros- 
perity during  the  first  half  of  the  last  century  was 
prolific  in  new  towns.  From  1700  until  1745 
thirty  of  them  were  incorporated,  very  nearly  as 
many  as  were  in  existence  in  1700.  There  was 
an  equally  steady  growth  in  population,  though 
all  the  figures  for  it  must  be  mere  estimates.  It 
is  estimated  by  Bancroft  at  17,000  for  the  year 
1688,  and  by  Trumbull  at  the  same  figures  for 
1713.  In  1755  the  board  of  trade  estimated  it 
at  100,000 ;  and  Bancroft  at  133,000,  with  3,500 
slaves.  It  is  not  possible  to  get  neai'er  to  the 
truth  ;  but  the  constantly  increasing  quotas  of 
Connecticut  to  New  England  armies  during  the 
years  between  1690  and  1763  are  enough  to  show 
the  growing  population  of  the  colony.     At  the 


COMMONWEALTH  DEVELOPMENT.  271 

date  last  named,  a  comparison  of  Bancroft's  esti- 
mate for  Connecticut  with  that  for  Massachusetts 
(207,000),  and  for  whites  in  Virginia  (168,000), 
will  show  that  the  seed  planted  on  the  banks  of 
the  Connecticut  had  grown  into  one  of  the  stateli- 
est trees  on  the  continent.  It  had  grown  so  large 
as  to  feel  the  cramping  influence  of  its  surround- 
ings. 

In  1762  all  the  soil  of  the  colony  had  been  al- 
lotted to  townships,  and  new  towns  formed  after 
that  year  were  carved  out  of  townships  already 
in  existence.  Long  before  that  time,  population 
had  begun  to  show  a  disposition  to  swarm.  The 
first  effort  in  this  direction  was  due  to  the  boun- 
dary settlement  of  1713-14  between  Connecticut 
and  Massachusetts.  In  consideration  of  certain 
concessions  in  straightening  the  line,  Massachu- 
setts gave  Connecticut  a  parcel  of  her  western 
lands.  Some  of  these  (60,000  acres,  according  to 
the  New  York  attorney  general's  report  in  1752), 
though  then  believed  to  be  in  Massachusetts,  wei'e 
really  in  the  district  to  be  known  as  Vermont. 
These  lands  were  sold  by  Connecticut  to  private 
parties,  and  their  purchases  drew  off  the  atten- 
tion of  a  considerable  number  of  her  people  to 
this  territory.  The  erection  of  Fort  Dummer  in 
1729  offered  some  promise  of  protection  to  set- 
tlers, and  those  who  had  long  owned  these  wild 
lands  began  to  think  of  settling  upon  them.  At 
first,  a  few  young  men  were  sent  thither  in  the 


272  CONNECTICUT. 

summer  to  work  the  land,  returning  home  for  the 
winter.  New  York  claimed  jurisdiction  over  the 
whole  territory,  under  the  iniquitous  grant  to 
the  duke,  which  had  been  extended  up  to  the  Con- 
necticut River  in  defiance  of  the  Massachusetts 
and  Connecticut  charters.  So  far  as  these  two 
colonies  were  concerned,  the  claim  had  been  given 
up  ;  but  New  York  still  maintained  it  against 
New  Hampshire.  Governor  Wentworth,  of  New 
Hampshire,  insisted  that  the  limits  of  his  colony 
extended  as  far  west  as  the  two  colonies  to  the 
south,  though  it  is  not  easy  to  see  on  what  ground. 
He  proceeded  to  make  grants  of  land  in  the  dis- 
puted territory,  very  many  of  them  to  Connecti- 
cut settlers.  He  cared  for  little  except  the  pro- 
ceeds of  the  sales,  and  left  civil  organization  to 
the  settlers.  The  result  was  that  the  Connecti- 
cut town  system  was  again  transferred  to  a  wil- 
derness, there  to  begin  a  struggle  with  the  central- 
ized system  of  New  York.  The  Vermont  towns 
were  even  more  independent  than  their  proto- 
types ;  and  their  "  independence  and  unbridled 
democracy"  formed  one  of  the  arguments  by 
which  New  York  obtained  a  judgment  in  her  fa- 
vor from  the  home  government.  Connecticut 
blood  and  town  and  personal  names  were  strongly 
represented  in  the  "  Hampshire  Grants ;  "  indeed, 
some  of  the  towns  in  the  grants  held  their  first 
town  meeting  in  Connecticut  before  the  removal 
of  their  settlers.     Ethan  and  Iia  Allen,  Warner, 


COMMONWEALTH  DEVELOPMENT.  273 

the  Chipmans,  Chittenden,  and  a  host  of  other 
Connecticut  men,  took  a  leading  phice  among  those 
who  resisted  the  authorities  of  New  York,  with, 
perhaps,  a  touch  of  hereditary  bitterness ;  and 
when  the  territory  erected  itself  into  a  State  in 
1777,  it  assumed  the  significant  title  of  "  New 
Connecticut,"  the  more  appropriate  name  of  Ver- 
mont being  substituted  in  the  course  of  the  year. 
The  details  of  the  struggle  are  not  within  our 
province.  It  need  only  be  said  that  the  New 
York  authorities  seem  to  have  found  most  embar- 
rassment in  dealing  with  the  new  and  vigorous 
form  of  local  government  which  had  become  es- 
tablished in  the  territory,  and  that  the  final 
establishment  of  the  State  of  Vermont  may  fairly 
be  claimed  as  another  success  of  the  Connecticut 
town  system. 

Here  dropping  this  extra-legal  effort  at  com- 
monwealth expansion,  we  come  to  the  strictly  le- 
gal attempt  to  enforce  the  charter  boundaries,  and 
its  failure.  The  effort  evidently  arose  from  an 
instinctive  perception  that  the  practical  bounds 
of  the  commonwealth  would  seriously  cramp  its 
growth,  and  reduce  its  rank  among  the  States,  as 
they  have  since  done.  The  charter  bounds  ex- 
tended west  to  the  Pacific  Ocean :  this  would 
have  carried  Connecticut  over  a  strip  covering  the 
northern  two  fifths  of  the  present  State  of  Penn- 
sylvania. Stuart  faithlessness  interfered  with  this 
doubly.     Almost  immediately  after  the  grant  of 

18 


274  CONNECTICUT. 

the  charter,  Charles  granted  to  his  brother  James 
the  Dutch  colony  of  New  Netherland,  thus  inter- 
rupting the  continuity  of  Connecticut.  Rather 
than  resist  the  king's  brother,  Connecticut  agreed 
and  ratified  the  interruption.  In  1681  a  more 
serious  interference  took  place.  Charles  granted 
to  Penn  the  province  of  Pennsylvania,  extending 
westward  five  degrees  between  the  40th  and  43d 
parallels  of  north  latitude.  The  width  of  the 
province  would  have  been  from  the  northern  out- 
skirts of  Philadelphia  to  about  the  present  city  of 
Utica  in  New  York,  thus  taking  in  five  degrees  of 
Connecticut's  grant,  and  all  western  New  York 
except  the  lake-shore.  Geographical  knowledge 
"was  not  very  profound;  and  Penn  seems  to  have 
founded  his  capital  city  before  discovering  that  he 
had  unluckily  placed  it  too  far  to  the  south,  out- 
side of  his  own  province  and  in  the  Baltimore 
grant.  What  was  to  be  done  ?  The  solution  of 
tlie  difficulty  deserves  more  credit  for  its  ingenuity 
than  for  its  ingenuousness,  and  Bancroft  absolves 
Penn  from  responsibility  for  it.  The  language  of 
his  grant  was  from  "  the  beginning  of  the  40th 
parallel  "  to  "  the  beginning  of  the  43d."  What 
was  "  the  beginning  of  the  40th  parallel "  ?  Evi- 
dently, said  the  Pennsylvania  argument,  the  39th. 
And  "  the  beginning  of  the  43d  "  ?  As  clearly, 
the  42d.  Ergo,  Pennsylvania  extended  south 
from  its  present  northern  boundary  to  Annapolis, 
taking  in  the  city  of  Baltimore  on  the  way.     The 


COMMONWEALTH  DEVELOPMENT.  275 

war  having  thus  been  carried  into  Africa,  the  of' 
far  was  made  to  compromise  with  the  Baltimore 
family  on  the  present  boundaries,  from  about 
latitude  39°  45'  to  latitude  42°,  and,  after  half  a 
century's  struggle,  the  compromise  was  adopted. 
New  York  was  more  than  satisfied  with  the  ar- 
rangement, as  it  carried  her  southern  boundary  a 
full  degree  to  the  south  ;  and  all  the  parties  seem 
to  have  ignored  Connecticut. 

The  territory  taken  from  Connecticut  by  the 
Penn  grant  would  be  bounded  southerly  on  the 
present  map  by  a  straight  line  entering  Pennsyl- 
vania about  Stroudsburg,  just  north  of  the  Dela- 
ware Water  Gap,  and  running  west  through  Hazel- 
ton,  Catawissa,  Clearfield,  and  New  Castle,  taking 
in  all  the  northern  coal,  iron,  and  oil  fields.  It 
was  a  royal  heritage,  but  the  Penns  made  no  at- 
tempt to  settle  it,  and  Connecticut  until  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century  had  no  energy  to  spare 
from  the  task  of  winning  her  home  territory  "  out 
of  the  fire,  as  it  were,  by  hard  blows  and  for  small 
recompense."  This  task  had  been  fairly  well  done 
by  1750,  and  in  1753  a  movement  to  colonize  in 
the  Wyoming  country  was  set  on  foot  in  Wind- 
ham county.  It  spread  by  degrees  until  the  Sus- 
quehanna Company  was  formed  the  next  year, 
with  nearly  700  members,  of  whom  638  were  of 
Connecticut.  Their  agents  made  a  treaty  with  the 
Five  Nations  July  11,  1754,  by  which  they  bought 
for  £2,000  a  tract  of  land  beginning  at  the  forty- 


276  CONNECTICUT. 

first  degree  of  latitude,  the  southerly  boundary  of 
Connecticut ;  thence  running  north,  following  the 
line  of  the  Susquehanna  at  a  distance  of  ten  miles 
from  it,  to  the  present  northern  boundary  of 
Pennsylvania ;  thence  one  hundred  and  twenty 
miles  west ;  thence  south  to  the  forty-first  degree 
and  back  to  the  point  of  beginning.  In  May, 
1755,  the  Connecticut  general  assembly  expressed 
its  acquiescence  in  the  scheme,  if  the  king  should 
approve  it  ;  and  it  approved  also  a  plan  of  Samuel 
Hazard,  of  Philadelphia,  for  another  colony,  to  be 
placed  west  of  Pennsylvania,  and  within  the  char- 
tered  limits  of  Connecticut.  The  court  might  have 
taken  stronger  ground  than  this  ;  for,  at  the  meet- 
ing of  commissioners  from  the  various  colonies  at 
Albany,  in  1754,  the  representatives  of  Pennsyl- 
vania being  present,  no  opposition  was  made  to  a 
resolution  that  Connecticut  and  Massachusetts, 
by  charter  right,  extended  west  to  the  South  Sea. 
The  formation  of  the  Susquehanna  Company 
brought  out  objections  from  Pennsylvania,  but 
the  company  sent  out  surveyors  and  plotted  its 
tract. 

Settlement  was  begun  on  the  Delaware  River 
in  1757,  and  in  the  Susquehanna  purchase  in 
1762.  This  was  a  temporary  settlement,  the  set- 
tlers going  home  for  the  winter.  A  permanent 
venture  was  made  the  next  year  on  the  flats  be- 
low Wilkes  Barre,  but  it  was  destroyed  by  the 
Indians  the  same  year.      In  1768  the  company 


COMMONWEALTH  DEVELOPMENT.  211 

marked  out  five  townships,  and  sent  out  forty  set- 
tlers for  the  first,  Kingston.  Most  of  them,  in- 
cluding the  famous  Captain  Zebulon  Butler,  had 
served  in  the  French  and  Indian  war ;  and  their 
first  step  was  to  build  the  "  Forty  Fort."  The 
Penns,  after  their  usual  policy,  had  refused  to  sell 
lands,  but  had  leased  plots  to  a  number  of  men 
on  condition  of  their  "  defending  the  lands  from 
the  Connecticut  claimants."  The  forty  Connecti- 
cut men  found  these  in  possession  when  they  ar- 
rived in  February,  1769,  and  a  war  of  writs  and 
arrests  followed  for  the  remainder  of  the  year. 
The  Pennsylvania  men  had  one  too  powerful  ar- 
gument in  the  shape  of  a  four-pounder  gun,  and 
they  retained  possession  at  the  end  of  the  year. 
Early  in  1770  the  forty  reappeared,  captured  the 
four-pounder,  and  secured  possession.  For  a 
time  in  1771  the  Pennsylvania  men  returned,  put 
up  a  fort  of  their  own,  and  engaged  in  a  partisan 
warfare  ;  but  the  numbers  of  the  Connecticut  men 
were  rapidly  increasing,  and  they  remained  mas- 
ters until  the  opening  of  the  Revolution,  when 
they  numbered  some  three  thousand.  The  Con- 
necticut general  court  passed  a  resolution  in  1771, 
maintaining  the  claim  of  its  colony  to  its  charter 
limits  west  of  the  Delaware.  In  1774  it  erected 
the  Susquehanna  district  into  a  town,  under  the 
name  of  Westmoreland,  making  it  a  part  of  Litch- 
field county,  the  farthest  northwest  of  the  origi- 
nal counties ;  and  its  deputies  took  their  seats  in 


278  CONNECTICUT. 

the  Connecticut  legislature.  In  1776,  Westmore- 
land town  was  made  a  distinct  county,  and  its  civil 
organization  was  complete.  Connecticut  laws  and 
taxes  were  enforced  regularly  ;  Connecticut  courts 
alone  were  in  session  ;  and  the  levies  from  the  dis- 
trict formed  the  twenty-fourth  Connecticut  regi- 
ment in  the  Continental  armies.  The  sordid, 
grasping,  long -leasing  policy  of  the  Penns  had 
never  been  able  to  stand  a  moment  before  the  on- 
coming wave  of  Connecticut  democracy,  with  its 
individual  land-ownership,  its  liberal  local  govern- 
ment, and  the  personal  incentive  offered  to  indi- 
viduals by  its  town  system.  So  far  as  the  Penns 
were  concerned,  the  Connecticut  town  system  sim- 
ply swept  over  them,  and  hardly  thought  of  them 
as  it  went.  But  for  the  Revolution,  the  check  oc- 
casioned by  the  massacre,  and  the  appearance  of  a 
popular  government  in  place  of  the  Penns,  nothing 
could  have  prevented  the  establishment  of  Con- 
necticut's authority  over  all  the  regions  embraced 
in  her  western  claims. 

In  July,  1778,  after  the  Continental  Congress 
had  refused  to  allow  the  temporary  return  of  the 
able-bodied  men  whom  the  Westmoreland  people 
had  sent  freely  into  the  army,  the  Tories  and  In- 
dians, under  John  Butler  and  Brandt,  fell  upon 
the  almost  defenseless  settlement.  They  met  no 
unresisting  victims.  The  old  men  and  boys,  the 
town  dignitaries  who  had  been  administering  civil 
affairs,  mustered  into  rank,  and  only  yielded  and 


COMMONWEALTH  DEVELOPMENT.  279 

fled  after  a  loss  of  half  their  number.  The  women 
and  children  were  spared  for  the  greater  horrors 
of  the  overland  retreat  to  Connecticut ;  and  the 
Connecticut  possession  vanished  again  into  thin 
air.  Detached  parties  returned  from  time  to 
time,  gathered  scanty  crops  under  constant  dan- 
ger from  Indians,  and  kept  alive  the  claims  of  in- 
dividuals and  of  the  commonwealth.  But  West- 
moreland county,  as  it  had  been,  was  no  more. 

The  articles  of  confederation  went  into  force 
early  in  1781.  One  of  their  provisions  empowered 
congress  to  appoint  courts  of  arbitration  to  decide 
disputes  between  States  as  to  boundaries.  Penn- 
sylvania at  once  availed  herself  of  this,  and  ap- 
plied for  a  court  to  decide  the  Wyoming  dispute. 
Connecticut  asked  for  time,  in  order  to  get  papers 
from  England ;  but  congress  overruled  the  mo- 
tion, and  ordered  the  court  to  meet  at  Trenton  in 
November,  1782.  After  forty-one  days  of  argu- 
ment, the  court  came  to  the  unanimous  conclusion 
that  Wyoming,  or  the  Susquehanna  district,  be- 
longed to  Pennsylvania  and  not  to  Connecticut. 
It  came  to  light,  more  than  ten  years  afterward, 
that  the  court  had  secretly  agreed  on  two  points 
for  its  guidance  :  (1)  whatever  its  decision  might 
be,  it  was  to  assign  no  reasons  for  it ;  and  (2)  the 
minority  was  to  yield  to  the  majority,  in  order  to 
make  the  decision  unanimous.  The  knowledge  of 
these  antecedent  conditions  takes  away  much  of 
the   force   of   the   decision ;    but   they  were   not 


280  CONNECTICUT. 

known  in  1782,  and  Connecticut  yielded  at  once. 
For  this  yielding,  however,  there  were  probably 
reasons  apart  from  the  justice  of  the  decision. 

It  was  just  at  this  time  that  the  Western  terri- 
tory was  the  controlling  question  in  politics. 
Virginia,  under  a  strained  and  very  dubious  inter- 
pretation of  her  northern  boundary,  claimed  the 
whole  Northwest,  in  addition  to  Kentucky.  The 
States  whose  western  boundaries  were  fixed  had 
two  points  of  objection  :  Virginia  would  get  none 
of  this  territory  if  the  authority  of  the  crown  were 
reestablished  ;  and  they  did  not  intend  to  spend 
their  blood  and  money  in  order  to  obtain  the 
Northwest  for  Virginia.  Connecticut's  western 
claims,  though  based  on  a  clear,  not  on  a  doubt- 
ful, charter  statement,  were  too  much  on  a  par 
with  those  of  Virginia  to  be  easily  separated  from 
them.  There  was  an  instinctive  sense,  outside  of 
Virginia,  that  the  national  existence  of  the  United 
States  was  bound  up  with  the  jurisdiction  over 
this  Northwest  territory ;  and  Connecticut's  share 
in  the  feeling  was  enough  to  balance  even  her 
selfish  interests.  She  even  imperiled  the  latter 
by  yielding  to  the  decision ;  for  it  is  hardly  pos- 
sible to  reconcile  the  decision  of  1782,  which  ig- 
nored the  charter,  with  the  acceptance  by  congress 
of  the  Connecticut  cession  of  1786,  which  im- 
pliedly recognized  the  charter  and  the  very  claims 
which  had  been  rejected  in  1782.  There  was  no 
bargain,  for   Pennsylvania  in  1786  voted  not  to 


COMMONWEALTH  DEVELOPMENT.  281 

accept  the  cession,  on  the  ground  that  it  recog- 
nized the  charter.  Connecticut  simply  made  way 
intelligently,  if  somewhat  regretfully,  for  the 
coming  nationality. 

The  cession  of  1786  of  course  put  an  end  to  all 
Connecticut's  ambitions  of  commonwealth  expan- 
sion :  she  was  to  be  forever  restricted  to  the  terri- 
tory lying  between  Massachusetts  and  Long  Is- 
land Sound,  and  between  Rhode  Island  and  New 
York.  And  yet  the  legal  title  of  Connecticut  to 
the  territory  which  she  gave  up  by  this  cession 
was  beyond  dispute.  It  has  been  suggested  that 
the  crown  made  the  grant  under  ignorance,  sup- 
posing that  North  America  was  far  narrower  than 
it  proved  to  be.  But  the  Plymouth  council,  when 
it  gave  up  its  charter  in  1635,  notified  the  king 
that  their  grant  was  "  through  all  the  main  land, 
from  sea  to  sea,  being  near  about  three  thousand 
miles  in  length^  There  was  not  a  geographer  in 
England  but  knew  that  the  Connecticut  grant,  in 
its  turn,  was  three  thousand  miles  long.  It  was 
adduced  as  a  prior  grant  by  the  English  com- 
missioners against  the  French  in  1752,  in  order  to 
assert  title  across  the  Mississippi.  Its  validity  was 
recognized  by  the  Albany  congress  of  1754,  Penn- 
sylvania being  represented.  The  establishment 
of  the  Mississippi  as  a  boundary  line  between  the 
colonies  and  Spain  was  founded  on  these  western 
charters  of  indefinite  extent.  The  peace  of  1783, 
which  laid  claim  to  the  Mississippi  as  a  western 


282  CONNECTICUT. 

boundary  for  the  United  States,  was  a  renewed 
ajB&rmation  of  the  charters  which  had  carried  the 
claims  of  the  United  States  up  to  that  river.  Fi- 
nally, the  acceptance  of  the  Connecticut  cession 
by  the  United  States  in  1786  was  a  renewed  con- 
firmation of  the  charter's  validity,  on  which  the 
further  claim  of  the  United  States  was  based. 
The  fact  that  Connecticut  had  yielded  to  the 
erection  of  the  new  colony  of  New  York  was  of 
interest  only  to  the  two  colonies  involved,  —  Con- 
necticut and  New  York ;  no  third  party,  as  Penn- 
sylvania, could  gain  or  lose  any  rights  thereby. 

It  would  have  been  absurd  to  ask  Connecticut 
to  surrender  a  claim  so  sound  in  law,  and  so  for- 
tified by  repeated  recognitions,  without  any  rec- 
ompense. Her  proposition,  that  she  should  re- 
serve a  tract  of  about  the  same  length  and  width 
as  the  Wyoming  grant,  west  of  Pennsylvania,  in 
northeastern  Ohio,  was  accepted  ;  and  this  was 
the  tract  known  as  the  Western  Reserve  of  Con- 
necticut. It  contained  about  three  and  a  half 
millions  of  acres.  In  1792  some  five  hundred 
thousand  acres  in  the  western  part  of  the  Reserve 
were  devoted  to  the  relief  of  those  persons  who 
had  been  burned  out  and  plundered  by  the  Brit- 
ish:  this  was  known  as  the  "Fire  Lands."  The 
rest  was  sold  under  the  direction  of  a  legislative 
committee,  and  the  proceeds  were  devoted  to  the 
school  fund  of  the  commonwealth.  It  was  not 
very  productive   until   Senator  James   Hillhouse 


COMMONWEALTH  DEVELOPMENT.  283 

was  appointed  sole  commissioner  in  1810.  He 
held  the  position  for  some  fifteen  years,  and  in- 
creased the  principal  to  nearly  $2,000,000,  with 
an  annual  income  of  over  $50,000.  This  principal 
still  remains  intact. 

The  unfortunate  Wyoming  settlers,  deserted  by 
their  own  State,  and  left  to  the  mercy  of  rival 
claimants,  had  a  hard  time  of  it  for  years.  The 
militia  of  the  neighboring  counties  of  Pennsylva- 
nia was  mustered,  to  enforce  the  writs  of  Pennsyl- 
vania courts ;  the  property  of  the  Connecticut 
men  was  destroyed,  their  fences  were  cast  down, 
and  their  rights  ignored ;  and  the  "  Pennamite 
and  Yankee  War  "  began.  The  Yankees  were  evi- 
dently getting  the  worse,  and  their  friends  at 
home  were  not  deaf  to  their  grievances.  The  old 
Susquehanna  Company  was  reorganized  in  1785- 
86,  and  made  ready  to  support  its  settlers  by  force. 
New  Yankee  faces  came  crowding  into  the  dis- 
puted territory.  Among  them  was  Ethan  Allen, 
and  with  him  came  some  Green  Mountain  Boys, 
the  promise  and  potency  of  more,  and  pungent 
memories  of  the  manner  in  which  Vermont  had 
solved  a  similar  diflficulty  with  New  York.  It  was 
an  open  secret  that  the  intention  was  to  organize 
a  new  State,  and  weary  Pennsylvania  and  con- 
gress into  a  recognition  of  it.  Its  constitution  had 
been  drafted,  and  its  state  officers  tacitly  agreed 
upon. 

Pennsylvania  in  1786  passed  an  accommodation 


284  CONNECTICUT. 

act,  by  which  the  lands  of  actual  settlers  were 
confirmed  to  them,  and  the  district  was  erected 
into  the  county  of  Luzerne.  Unfortunately,  there 
were  dissensions  between  the  old  settlers  and  the 
new-comers  of  the  Wyoming  district,  and  Penn- 
sylvania suspended  the  accommodation  act  in 
1788,  and  repealed  it  in  1790.  There  were  re- 
newed struggles,  and  in  1799  the  act  was  sub- 
stantially reenacted,  and  the  controversy  came  to 
an  end.  The  settlement  had  the  result  of  car- 
rying into  Pennsylvania  a  large  infusion  of  Con- 
necticut blood,  the  source  of  the  prevalence  of 
Connecticut  names  in  this  part  of  Pennsylvania. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 
THE  STAMP  ACT   AND   THE  REVOLUTION. 

The  close  of  the  French  and  Indian  war  marks 
the  period  when  Connecticut's  democratic  consti- 
tution began  to  influence  other  commonwealths. 
Her  charter  was  an  object-lesson  to  all  of  them. 
It  was  the  standard  to  which  their  demands  grad- 
ually came  up  ;  and  their  growing  demands  upon 
the  crown  caused  an  equally  steady  approximation 
toward  the  establishment  of  a  local  democracy 
like  that  which  Connecticut  had  kept  up  for  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years. 

The  passage  of  the  Stamp  Act  by  the  English 
Parliament  was  met  at  once  by  a  protest  from  the 
Connecticut  general  assembly,  followed  by  in- 
structions to  its  agent  in  London  to  insist  firmly 
on  "  the  exclusive  right  of  the  colonies  to  tax 
themselves  and  on  the  privilege  of  trial  by  jury," 
as  rights  which  "  they  never  could  recede  from." 
It  had  good  reason  to  speak  plainly,  for  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  act  struck  more  heavily  at  Connecti- 
cut than  at  any  other  colony  except  Rhode  Is- 
land. No  other  colonies  had  been  so  completely 
free  from  any  appearance  of  royal  interference  as 


286  CONNECTICUT. 

these ;  and  Connecticut's  lack  of  commerce  had 
prevented  it  from  feeling  even  those  forms  of 
royal  interference  which  the  commercial  interests 
of  Rhode  Island  had  brought  upon  it.  To  Con- 
necticut the  act  was  simply  intolerable,  and  she 
not  only  spoke  but  made  ready  for  action. 

Jared  Ingersoll,  of  New  Haven,  was  sent  to 
London  as  special  agent  to  remonstrate  against 
the  passage  of  the  act.  When  his  mission  had 
failed,  he  accepted  the  office  of  stamp  agent  for 
Connecticut,  by  advice  of  Franklin,  and  set  out 
for  home.  He  found  things  there  in  a  ferment. 
The  governor  and  some  of  the  leading  men  were 
willing  to  submit,  rather  than  risk  the  loss  of  the 
charter,  but  the  instinct  of  the  democracy  taught 
it  that  this  was  the  time  to  put  its  charter  priv- 
ileges into  security  forever.  The  ministers  were 
preaching  against  the  act ;  the  towns  were  order- 
ing their  officers  to  disregard  it,  promising  to  hold 
them  harmless  ;  Trumbull  had  become  the  head 
of  a  popular  movement ;  and  volunteer  organiza- 
tions, calling  themselves  "  Sons  of  Liberty,"  were 
patrolling  the  country,  overawing  those  who  were 
inclined  to  support  the  home  government,  and 
making  ready  to  resist  the  execution  of  the  law. 
Ingersoll  seems  to  have  been  sufficiently  impressed 
with  the  strength  of  the  home  government  to  be 
willing  to  avoid  a  conflict ;  and  he  meant  now  to 
execute  faithfully  the  office  which  he  had  accepted 
only  to  make  its  provisions  more  tolerable  to  his 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.     287 

countrymen.  The  meeting  between  him  and  them 
was  that  of  the  flint  and  steel.  The  Sons  of  Lib- 
erty were  out  and  in  waiting  for  him  as  he  rode 
from  New  Haven  to  Hartford ;  and  he  entered 
the  capital  under  the  escort  of  a  thousand  horse- 
men, farmers  and  freeholders,  who  had  compelled 
him  to  resign  his  office.  He  had  not  lost  his  head 
or  shown  any  craven  frailty :  he  had  simply  made 
up  his  mind  that  he  had  gone  far  enough  in  an 
unpleasant  duty,  and  that  "  the  cause  was  not 
worth  dying  for."  He  had,  however,  carried  his 
resistance  up  to  the  verge  of  temerity ;  and,  as  he 
rode  on  his  white  horse  at  the  head  of  the  trium- 
phant mob,  he  said  afterward  that  he  realized 
at  last  what  the  book  of  Revelation  meant  by 
"Death  on  the  pale  horse,  and  hell  following 
him." 

Governor  Fitch  died  in  1766,  and,  after  a  three 
years'  service  of  William  Pitkin,  Jonathan  Trum- 
bull, the  first  "  war  governor "  of  Connecticut, 
succeeded  him.  He  held  the  office  until  1783  ;  he 
was  the  trusted  associate  of  Washington,  and  the 
latter's  familiar  way  of  addressing  him  when  ask- 
ing his  advice  or  assistance  is  said  to  have  been 
the  origin  of  the  popular  phrase  "  Brother  Jona- 
than." The  family  has  been  one  of  the  most 
noted  in  the  history  of  the  commonwealth.  It 
has  included  Governor  Jonathan  Trumbull,  his 
sons  John  (the  painter),  Jonathan,  governor  from 
1798  until  1809,  and  Joseph,  commissarj'^  general 


288  CONNECTICUT. 

of  the  Revolutionary  army  ;  John  Trumbull,  the 
author  of  "  McFingal ;  "  Benjamin  Trumbull,  the 
author  of  one  of  the  standard  histories  of  the 
State ;  James  Hammond  Trumbull,  the  recognized 
authority  on  the  Indian  languages  and  the  history 
of  the  State ;  his  brother,  H.  C.  Trumbull,  a 
leader  in  missionary  and  Sunday-school  work  ;  and 
ex-Senator  Lyman  Trumbull,  of  Illinois.  The 
reign  of  the  Trumbulls  was  ushered  in  brilliantly 
by  the  governor.  In  him  the  people  had  found 
the  man  they  needed,  and  doubt  and  hesitation 
fled  before  him. 

The  rapid  succession  of  events  which  followed 
the  Boston  Tea  Party  —  the  Boston  Port  Bill,  the 
Massachusetts  Act,  and  the  preparations  of  Massa- 
chusetts for  active  resistance  —  met  prompt  sym- 
pathy and  support  in  Connecticut.  The  non-im- 
portation agreement  had  been  universally  signed 
in  1768-69,  and,  if  contemporary  accounts  are  to 
be  trusted,  was  kept  far  more  faithfully  in  Con- 
necticut than  in  some  of  her  neighbor  colonies. 
Unofficial  preparations,  with  the  quiet  approval  of 
the  oflScial  authorities,  were  now  made,  so  that, 
when  hostilities  began,  Connecticut  was  the  first 
colony  to  take  her  place  abreast  of  Massachusetts. 
In  all  this  there  was  not  one  iota  of  change  in 
the  traditional  policy  of  the  colony.  In  the  pro- 
ceedings which  led  to  the  loss  or  serious  modifica- 
tion of  the  Massachusetts  charter  in  1691,  Con- 
necticut had  taken  no  part  with  the  attacked  col- 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.    289 

ony,  partly  because  the  latter  had  no  intentions  of 
real  resistance,  and  partly  because  such  resistance, 
under  the  circumstances  into  which  Massachusetts 
had  got  herself,  was  evidently  hopeless.  In  1728 
likewise,  when  Massachusetts  was  engaging  in  a 
war  of  annoyances  with  her  royal  governors,  Con- 
necticut had  instructed  her  London  agent  to  take 
no  part  with  Massachusetts,  but  to  secure  the 
colony's  maintenance  of  her  charter  quite  inde- 
pendently of  her.  The  Connecticut  general  as- 
sembly had  a  great  trust  confided  to  it,  and  it  was 
not  disposed  to  risk  it  in  Quixotic  enterprises  of 
this  sort.  In  1769-70  Massachusetts  had  at  last 
been  wrought  up  to  concert  pitch  :  her  people  ev- 
idently meant  to  fight ;  there  was  a  fair  chance  of 
success,  since  the  other  colonies  showed  their  in- 
tention of  supporting  her ;  the  enterprise  was  neces- 
sary, was  no  longer  Quixotic,  and  Connecticut  went 
into  it  heart  and  soul.  Nothing  in  the  history  of 
this  commonwealth  is  so  noteworthy  as  the  pre- 
vailing characteristic  of  its  people,  —  their  judicial 
power  of  estimating  the  chances  of  success,  their 
self-restraint  under  every  provocation  until  the 
chances  seem  to  be  reasonably  good,  and  their  un- 
reserved abandonment  to  action  when  the  time 
for  action  seems  to  have  fully  come.  It  is  Con- 
necticut tradition  that  the  first  step  of  the  gen- 
eral assembly  in  1763  was  to  appoint  three  of  its 
ablest  men  to  argue  in  favor  of  the  right  of  parlia- 
ment to  tax  the  colonies,  and  three  fairly  matched 
19 


290  CONNECTICUT. 

opponents  to  argue  against  it ;  that  the  argument, 
consuming  several  days,  took  place  before  the  as- 
sembly under  a  pledge  of  secrecy  from  all  con- 
cerned ;  and  that  its  result  was  the  unanimous 
agreement  of  the  members  against  the  right  of 
parliament,  and  in  favor  of  the  lawfulness  of  resist- 
ance. The  story  is  fairly  typical  of  the  Connecti- 
cut way  of  looking  at  questions  of  the  kind,  its 
determination  to  anchor  tenacity  of  purpose  fast 
in  legality  of  object,  and  to  insist  first  on  being 
right.  One  may  well  speculate  as  to  the  results 
on  American  history  if  such  a  people,  instead  of 
being  cribbed  into  four  thousand  square  miles  of 
territory,  had  been  able  to  impress  their  character- 
istics on  the  population  of  the  magnificent  domain 
which  was  theirs  by  charter. 

At  first,  the  preparations  for  resistance  were 
made  by  the  towns,  which  acted,  in  the  traditional 
Connecticut  fashion,  as  if  they  were  little  com- 
monwealths in  themselves.  They  met,  voted  sol- 
emn condemnation  of  the  ministry,  appointed 
committees  of  safety,  and  appropriated  money  to 
buy  arms  and  powder.  Every  town  sent  its  con- 
tribution to  the  poor  of  Boston,  and  every  com- 
mittee felt  bound  also  to  send  a  long  letter  of  con- 
dolence. The  general  assembly  then  began  prepa- 
rations to  direct  the  storm.  In  May  and  October, 
1774,  it  appointed  military  officers  where  they 
were  needed  ;  directed  every  military  company  in 
the  colony  to  be  drilled,  with  fines  for  non-attend« 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.     291 

ance  ;  and  sent  delegates  to  the  Continental  Con- 
gress. The  recommendations  of  tliat  body  against 
importing  or  exporting  goods  from  or  to  Great 
Britain  were  endorsed  by  the  general  assembly, 
and  wei'e  faithfully  carried  out.  But  it  is,  again, 
a  curious  survival  of  primitive  conditions  that  the 
towns  thought  it  necessary  for  them  also  to  meet 
and  endorse  the  action  of  congress  and  the  assem- 
bly. The  town  republics,  which  had  given  birth 
to  the  commonwealth,  were  still  conscious  of  an 
abundant  vitality. 

The  battle  of  Lexington  led  to  the  first  offen- 
sive movement  by  the  Americans  ;  and  it  is  a  sin- 
gularly fitting  testimony  to  Connecticut's  readi- 
ness to  help  Massachusetts,  that,  while  the  latter 
was  defending  herself,  this  offensive  movement 
for  her  relief,  the  capture  of  Ticonderoga  and  its 
stores,  came  from  Connecticut.  The  general  as- 
sembly refrained  from  officially  sanctioning  it ; 
but  it  was  undertaken  with  its  approval,  and  it 
.paid  the  bills  for  the  expedition  two  years  after- 
ward. The  opportunity  for  the  venture  was  of- 
fered by  the  close  connection  which  had  so  long 
existed  between  Connecticut  and  Vermont.  Silas 
Deane  and  ten  associates,  having  assurances  of 
the  assembly's  approval,  took  the  money,  some 
X800,  out  of  the  treasury,  giving  their  receipts 
therefor ;  took  a  party  of  Connecticut  volunteers 
to  Vermont ;  raised  a  force  among  the  kindred 
spirits   of  that  region  ;    and   made   the   capture 


292  CONNECTICUT. 

which  brought  encouragement  and  relief  to  the 
blockading  army  before  Boston. 

Long  before  this,  however,  the  men  of  Connec- 
ticut had  been  in  motion  for  Boston.  The  first 
message  from  the  governor  to  Putnam,  announ- 
cing the  fight  at  Concord  and  Lexington,  found 
the  veteran  at  work  in  his  field.  He  left  the  plow 
in  the  furrow,  galloped  to  the  governor's  resi- 
dence, and  received  orders  to  go  to  Boston  forth- 
with. He  rode  thither  in  eighteen  hours,  without 
dismounting,  and  was  followed  by  the  volunteers 
of  his  colony,  many  of  whom  had  undergone  train- 
ing in  the  French  and  Indian  war.  With  Put- 
nam, as  leading  ofi&cers,  were  David  Wooster  and 
Joseph  Spencer,  also  veterans ;  they  were  com- 
missioned by  congress  as  brigadier-generals,  and 
Putnam  as  major-general.  It  is  a  little  curious 
that  Arnold,  though  a  Connecticut  man  by  birth, 
did  not  receive  any  special  recognition  from  the 
colony,  his  commissions  and  employments  being 
mainly  from  Massachusetts. 

The  general  assembly  ordered  the  emission  of 
£100,000  in  bills  of  credit,  to  provide  for  the 
equipment  of  eight  regiments,  which  were  ordered 
to  be  enlisted  from  the  militia.  One  result  of  the 
far-sighted  preparations  of  the  commonwealth  was, 
that,  when  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill  was  fought, 
and  the  ammunition  of  the  fort's  defenders  con- 
sisted of  but  sixty-three  half-barrels  of  powder, 
thirty-six  of  them  were  a  present  from  the  colony 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.    293 

of  Connecticut.  Like  all  the  other  New  England 
colonies,  she  sent  men  who  were  unaccustomed  to 
discipline,  and  were  not  easily  brought  under 
prompt  military  obedience ;  but  Bunker  Hill  was 
enough  to  show  that  they  could  at  least  fight 
when  placed  before  an  enemy.  If  there  was  a 
flag  in  the  line,  it  was  theirs  ;  they  held  the  rail 
fence  until  the  retreat  was  secured ;  and  their 
leader,  Putnam,  put  his  own  life  at  stake  again 
and  again  in  the  effort  to  check  the  retreat  at 
Bunker  Hill,  and  at  every  step  on  the  road  off  the 
peninsula.  Indeed,  it  is  a  mooted  question 
whether,  in  the  general  confusion  of  the  day,  Put- 
nam should  not  be  considered  the  commander  of 
the  American  forces  engaged. 

The  colony  itself  was  corjiparatively  safe  from 
invasion  except  on  the  coast,  where  there  was  an 
attack  on  Stonington  by  a  British  vessel.  Never- 
theless, those  who  had  not  gone  to  the  seat  of  war 
were  not  disposed  to  remain  idle.  Connecticut 
was  practically  unanimous  on  the  great  question  ; 
New  York  was  badly  divided,  and  the  Tories  there 
were  men  of  influence  and  determination.  The 
man  of  most  influence  among  them  was  Riving- 
ton,  the  publisher  of  the  "  New  York  Gazette," 
the  Tory  newspaper  organ.  Early  in  September, 
1775,  Captain  Isaac  Sears,  having  raised  a  troop 
of  Connecticut  horsemen,  rode  into  New  York 
city,  raided  the  "  Gazette  "  office,  and  carried  off 
the  types  and   apparatus.     Early  in    1776    Gen- 


294  CONNECTICUT. 

eral  Lee  seized  New  York  city  with  some  1,200 
Connecticut  troops,  and  held  it  until  Washington's 
army  was  transferred  thither  after  the  evacuation 
of  Boston.  Then  Putnam  was  put  in  command 
of  the  city  and  its  environs,  and  drove  off  the  Eng- 
lish fleet.  One  of  the  ornaments  of  the  city  had 
been  an  equestrian  statue  of  King  George,  cast  in 
lead  and  gilt.  Just  a  week  after  the  adoption  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  this  was  carried 
off  by  night  to  the  house  of  Oliver  Wolcott,  in 
Litchfield  county,  and  there  cast  into  bullets, 
making  42,088  cartridges. 

While  the  zeal  of  the  people  thus  outran  official 
discretion,  the  Connecticut  authorities  also  had  all 
that  they  could  attend  to,  though  in  a  soberer 
way.  Governor  Trumbull's  correspondence  with 
Washington  had  already  assumed  that  close  and 
confidential  cast  which  it  maintained  throughout 
the  contest.  The  assembly  was  busily  engaged  in 
raising  men,  and  providing  for  their  support  by 
the  issue  of  bills  and  by  taxation.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  for  a  time  almost  the  entire  bur- 
den of  the  struggle  lay  upon  Connecticut ;  and 
the  unflinching  manner  in  which  it  was  met  and 
sustained  is  made  more  conspicuous  by  the  fact 
that  the  colony  was  not  individually  menaced  as 
were  colonies  which  refused  to  bear  any  fair  pro- 
portion of  the  burden.  The  Department  of  the 
North,  in  1775,  had  2,800  men  in  the  field ;  2,500 
of  these  were  Connecticut  troops.     When  Wash- 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.    295 

ington's  army  settled  down  around  New  York, 
more  than  half  of  his  force  of  17,000  men  had 
been  contributed  by  Connecticut.  It  was  not 
wonderful  that  Washington  should  write  to  the 
governor  that  he  had  "  full  confidence  in  your 
most  ready  assistance  on  every  occasion,  and  that 
such  measures  as  appear  to  you  most  likely  to  ad- 
vance the  public  good,  in  this  and  every  instance, 
will  be  most  cheerfully  adopted ;  "  nor  that  he 
should  speak  of  the  assembly  in  such  terms  as 
these  :  "  I  have  nothing  to  suggest  for  the  consid- 
eration of  your  assembly ;  I  am  confident  they 
will  not  be  wanting  in  their  exertions  for  support- 
ing the  just  and  constitutional  rights  of  the  colo- 
nies." Even  Washington's  emphasis  had  some- 
thing of  reserve  and  self-restraint  about  it ;  and 
his  unreserve  in  this  case  derives  additional  force 
from  his  well-grounded  complaints  of  the  action  of 
colonial  authorities  in  general. 

One  of  the  captains  of  Knowlton's  Connecticut 
regiment  was  Captain  Nathan  Hale,  a  graduate  of 
Yale  in  1773,  a  young  man  of  fine  personal  pres- 
ence and  of  high  intelligence.  His  family  was 
settled  in  Coventry,  Conn. ;  and  his  ancestor  had 
been  the  first  minister  of  Beverly,  Mass.  While 
Washington  was  lying  near  Fort  Washington,  af- 
ter the  retreat  from  Long  Island,  it  became  im- 
peratively necessary  for  him  to  obtain  accurate 
intelligence  from  the  British  camp.  He  called 
for  a  volunteer  from  the  younger  officers  of  the 


296  CONNECTICUT. 

army,  and  Hale  was  the  only  one  who  offered  him- 
self. His  offer  was  accepted,  and  his  mission  had 
been  accomplished  with  skill  and  success,  when 
he  was  recognized  by  a  Tory  relative  in  the  Brit- 
ish lines,  who  sent  word  to  headquarters  that  an 
American  spy  was  at  work  in  the  camp.  Adver- 
tised and  described  throughout  the  lines,  he  yet 
had  sufficient  address  to  make  his  way  as  far  as 
the  outposts  before  he  was  arrested.  The  testi- 
mony of  his  relative  convicted  him,  and  he  was 
hanged  on  the  following  morning.  Not  so  much 
his  fate,  as  the  manner  of  it,  exasperated  the  peo- 
ple of  the  commonwealth.  He  was  denied  the 
company  of  a  minister  ;  the  poor  consolation  of  a 
written  message  home  was  refused  ;  and  it  was 
the  common  report  that  the  reason  for  this  bar- 
barity of  punishment  was  that  "  the  rebels  might 
not  know  that  they  had  a  man  in  their  army  who 
could  die  with  such  firmness."  In  the  traditional 
Connecticut  spirit,  having  undertaken  the  work, 
he  did  not  flinch  from  its  consummation.  His  last 
words  were :  "If  I  had  ten  thousand  lives,  I 
would  lay  them  down  in  defense  of  my  country." 
The  words  meant  something  in  his  mouth. 

On  the  coast,  the  preponderant  navy  of  the 
king  was  very  annoying,  but  principally  in  its  at- 
tacks on  chicken-roosts  and  sheepfolds.  Yankee 
ingenuity  exerted  itself  to  get  rid  of  the  annoy- 
ance. David  Bushnell,  another  young  graduate 
of  Yale,  of  the  class  of  1775,  living  at  Saybrook, 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.     297 

stimulated  by  the  necessity  of  the  case,  brought 
out  his  "  American  Turtle,"  which  was  to  antici- 
pate the  modern  system  of  torpedoes,  and  blow  the 
British  fleet  out  of  water.  The  Turtle  contained 
a  magazine  of  explosives,  and  a  connected  system 
of  clock-work,  and  could  be  kept  under  the  control 
of  the  operator  on  shore,  so  as  to  rise  and  fall  at 
his  will.  The  first  attempt,  made  by  a  person 
unfamiliar  with  the  mechanism,  resulted  in  a  tre- 
mendous explosion,  not  under  the  vessel  aimed  at, 
but  near  enough  to  put  the  naval  officers  into  a 
terrible  fright.  Another  attempt  had  better  suc- 
cess, and  this  increased  the  terror.  Still  another, 
in  1777,  gave  rise  to  the  panic  among  the  British 
forces  at  Philadelphia  which  Hopkinson  celebrated 
in  his  "  Battle  of  the  Kegs."  Long  afterward,  in 
1813,  on  a  similar  occasion,  the  too  impertinent 
intrusion  of  the  British  fleet  on  the  shores  of  Con- 
necticut was  rebuked  and  checked  in  the  same 
fashion.  A  British  vessel  was  allowed  to  capture 
a  vessel  in  which  explosives  had  been  connected 
with  a  clock-work.  The  Ramillies  barely  escaped 
destruction,  and  her  angry  commander  inflicted  a 
bombardment  on  the  offending  town,  Stonington, 
demanding  as  the  price  of  exemption  that  the  in- 
habitants should  promise  to  set  no  more  torpedoes 
afloat,  a  demand  which  was  promptly  refused. 

The  interior  of  the  commonwealth,  secure  alike 
by  its  distance  from  the  seat  of  war,  by  the  uni- 
versal loyalty  of  its  population,  and  by  the  primi- 


298  CONNECTICUT. 

tive  simplicity  of  a  people  who  knew  all  tlieir 
neighbors  for  miles,  and  could  detect  any  one  at- 
tempting an  escape,  was  a  most  excellent  place  for 
the  detention  of  prisoners.  The  jails,  the  public 
buildings,  and  even  the  private  houses  of  the 
northern  townships,  were  made  places  of  deposit 
for  prisoners  of  war  or  for  political  prisoners. 
Hither  came  the  Tory  oflELcials  of  New  York,  the 
prisoners  from  Long  Island,  and  others  ;  and  the 
lenity  of  their  treatment  stood  in  strong  contrast 
with  the  condition  of  the  Americans  who  returned 
from  the  horrible  prison-hulks  of  the  British  forces, 
starved,  diseased,  and  treated  with  every  shade  of 
heathenish  cruelty  short  of  absolute  cannibalism. 
Their  return  home  is  particularly  creditable  to  the 
colonists  in  that  it  seems  to  have  made  no  differ- 
ence in  their  treatment  of  their  own  prisoners,  or 
rather  guests. 

It  must  be  acknowledged  that  the  substantial 
unanimity  of  the  people  had  been  secured  by 
strong,  if  unofficial,  measures.  The  authorities 
■winked  assiduously  at  the  operations  of  the  town 
committees  who  made  it  their  special  business  to 
see  that  Tories  recanted,  left  the  town,  or  were 
placed  where  they  would  do  the  least  harm.  We 
have  no  means  of  ascertaining  exactly  how  far  it 
was  necessary  for  these  committees  to  go.  Terrible 
accounts  of  their  doings,  of  their  riotous  proceed- 
ings, tarrings  and  featherings,  etc.,  are  given  us 
by  the  Rev.  Samuel  Peters,  a  Tory  clergyman  of 


TEE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.    299 

the  Church  of  England,  who  was  driven  from  the 
colony  during  the  opening  troubles,  and  afterwards 
took  a  terrible  revenge  by  publishing  a  "  History  " 
of  Connecticut  in  London.  But  Peters  stands  also 
as  the  only  authority  for  the  phenomena  at  Bel- 
lows' Falls,  where  the  water  of  the  Connecticut 
River  runs  so  swiftly  that  an  iron  crowbar  cannot 
be  forced  into  it,  but  floats  on  the  surface  ;  for  the 
inhumanity,  to  give  it  no  worse  name,  of  Hooker, 
in  giving  to  the  Connecticut  Indians  Bibles  infected 
with  the  smallpox,  so  as  to  put  them  out  of  the 
way  of  the  rising  young  colony ;  for  the  amusing 
manner  in  which  the  inhabitants  of  Windham, 
alarmed  by  the  noise  of  an  invading  army,  kept 
guard  against  it  all  night,  finding  in  the  morning 
that  it  was  no  more  than  a  flying  column  of  frogs 
on  the  way  to  water ;  for  those  singular  members 
of  the  Connecticut  fauna,  the  "  whapperknocker  " 
and  the  "  cuba,"  whose  untamable  ferocity,  so  well 
known  to  all  naturalists,  the  veracious  "  Doctor  " 
takes  pleasure  in  describing  from  personal  obser- 
vation ;  and  for  such  a  mass  of  other  lies  as  Mun- 
chausen himself  might  have  been  proud  to  father. 
Unless  this  mass  of  fiction  is  also  to  be  taken  on 
Peters's  authority,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  his 
authority  is  to  count  for  much  as  to  the  asserted 
mistreatment  of  Connecticut  Tories. 

Outside  of  Peters's  statements,  and  the  vague 
newspaper  stories  current  at  that  day,  the  strongest 
case  made  against  the  Connecticut  fathers  of  the 


800  CONNECTICUT. 

republic  is  in  their  use  of  the  Simsbury  copper- 
mines  as  a  place  of  confinement  for  Tories  "  and 
other  notorious  offenders."  The  existence  of  cop- 
per at  Simsbury  was  suspected  as  early  as  1705 ; 
and  the  town  leased  the  mines  to  various  compa- 
nies, who  brought  over  miners  from  Germany  and 
spent  their  money  freely,  but  got  little  of  it  back. 
The  ore  contained  from  fifteen  to  twenty  per  cent, 
of  copper,  but  was  too  refractory  to  do  more  than 
lure  speculators  into  bankruptcy  through  assayers' 
reports.  Governor  Belcher  wrote  in  1735  that  he 
had  spent  $75,000  there  since  1721.  Coins,  called 
"  Granby  coppers,"  from  the  residence  of  the  coiner 
in  the  neighboring  town  of  Granby,  were  made 
from  the  metal  in  1737-39  ;  but  the  copper  was  so 
nearly  pure,  and  so  much  in  demand  for  jewelers' 
alloy,  that  they  have  almost  disappeared.  In  1773 
mining  ceased,  and  the  colony  spent  about  $375  in 
fitting  up  the  mine  as  a  prison.  The  main  shaft 
was  near  the  top  of  a  small  hill ;  and  the  buildings 
at  the  mouth,  the  wall  surrounding  them,  and  the 
naked  hill  sloping  down  in  front  of  it,  must  have 
added  a  shade  of  horror  to  the  unknown  future  in 
the  mind  of  the  Tory  who  was  approaching  it. 
Certain  it  is  that  hardly  anything  was  so  dreadful 
to  the  Tory  mind  as  the  prospect  of  incarceration 
at  Simsbury.  In  1781  congress  applied  for  per- 
mission to  use  it  as  a  prison  for  state  offenders  ; 
but  the  almost  immediate  cessation  of  hostilities 
relieved  the  national  authority  from  any  such  ne. 
cessity. 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.     301 

The  number  confined  here,  both  of  ordinary  of- 
fenders and  of  Tories,  probably  never  exceeded 
thirty  at  any  one  time  ;  but  the  number  of  insur- 
rections and  escapes  was  disproportionately  great, 
showing  that  even  copper-mines  will  not  a  prison 
make.  The  shaft  was  nearly  a  hundred  feet  deep  ; 
but  the  cells  were  in  the  galleries,  none  of  them 
more  than  sixty  feet  below  the  surface.  In  spite 
of  the  frequent  escapes,  public  confidence  in  the 
security  of  the  place  was  unimpaired,  and  it  was 
the  ordinary  state  prison  from  1790  until  1827, 
when  the  new  prison  at  Wethersfield  took  its 
place.  In  defense  of  the  establishment  of  the 
prison  in  such  a  location,  it  may  be  urged  that 
such  a  step  was  not  considered  improper  anywhere 
at  the  time  ;  that  the  terrors  of  the  place  were 
more  in  imagination  than  in  reality;  that  the 
health  of  the  prisoners  was  good  and  was  not  af- 
fected unfavorably  by  their  location ;  and  that 
special  practices  of  that  time  must  not  be  judged 
by  the  more  civilized  theory  of  a  later  era.  So 
late  as  1807,  a  traveler  who  visited  it  could  go  no 
further  in  reprehension  than  to  say  :  "  For  myself, 
I  cannot  get  rid  of  the  impression  that,  without 
any  extraordinary  cruelty  in  its  actual  operation, 
there  is  something  very  like  cruelty  in  the  device 
and  design."  How  much  more  lenient  must  have 
been  the  judgment  of  a  sound  Whig  of  1775  when 
he  saw  a  Tory  consigned  to  the  Simsbury  New* 
gate! 


302  CONNECTICUT. 

Patriotic  solicitude  must  have  been  reinforced 
by  religious  intolerance.  The  Episcopal  Church 
had  always  been  an  alien  in  Connecticut.  Its 
founders  had  broken  away  from  the  Established 
or  Congregational  Church ;  their  success  had  di- 
minished the  resources  of  the  latter  ;  their  minis- 
ters had  to  cross  the  ocean  to  be  ordained,  and  to 
take  a  special  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  crown  ; 
they  were  his  majesty's  opposition  in  a  colony 
■which  liked  neither  majesty  nor  opposition ;  and 
they  were  strongly  suspected  of  a  design  to  reduce 
this,  with  the  other  colonies,  to  some  form  of 
episcopacy.  The  latter  belief,  which  had  a  special 
weight  in  bringing  about  the  final  revolution,  was 
increased  in  Connecticut  by  the  fact  that,  when- 
ever the  Episcopal  Church  had  come  into  collision 
with  the  colonial  authorities,  its  first  and  most  ef- 
fective weapon  had  always  been  a  threat  of  appeal 
to  the  home  government.  There  was  probably 
hardly  a  man  in  Connecticut  who,  being  a  Whig 
and  a  Congregationalist,  did  not  believe  that  every 
Episcopalian  was  either  an  open  or  a  secret  Tory, 
and  that  the  Episcopalian  ministers  were  their 
leaders  and  guides.  The  Episcopal  churches  in 
the  colony  were  shut,  and  the  ministers  were  si- 
lenced, except  Rev.  John  Beach,  an  Episcopalian 
missionary  at  Reading  and  Newtown,  who  persisted 
in  praying  for  the  king  as  usual,  in  spite  of  rough 
treatment  at  the  hands  of  the  Whigs.  For  the 
time,  the  Episcopal  Church  in  Connecticut  was  sus* 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.    803 

pended,  and  its  members  were  almost  outlawed, 
for  the  colonial  authorities  would  give  them  only. 
a  grudging  protection.  The  reestablishment  of 
peace  brought  the  reestablishment  of  the  Church  ; 
and,  thirty  years  later,  the  sons  of  its  members 
had  the  pious  satisfaction  of  disestablishing  the 
Church  which  had  persecuted  their  fathers. 

The  connection  between  the  Episcopalians  of 
Connecticut  and  of  New  York  city  had  always 
been  close,  and  it  cannot  be  supposed  that  the  suf- 
ferings of  the  Connecticut  Tories  had  been  looked 
at  with  indifference  in  New  York.  As  the  tide  of 
war  rolled  off  through  the  Jerseys  toward  Phila- 
delphia, stripping  Connecticut  of  a  large  portion 
of  its  able-bodied  men,  the  time  seemed  to  have 
come  for  a  blow  that  should  teach  the  Congrega- 
tional colony  that  its  enemies  had  still  some  of  the 
terrors  of  war  at  their  command.  Tryon,  the 
royalist  governor  of  New  York,  with  a  force  of  two 
thousand  men  and  twenty-five  vessels,  sailed  east- 
ward through  Long  Island  Sound,  and  landed  at 
Saugatuck,  about  twenty  miles  from  Danbury, 
•where  a  considerable  amount  of  Continental  and 
State  stores  had  been  gathered.  A  hasty  march 
overland  brought  them  to  Danbury,  April  26, 
1777,  where  they  destroyed  not  only  the  stores, 
but  the  bulk  of  the  town,  carefully  sparing  Tory 
property.  There  were  some  Continental  soldiers 
in  the  neighborhood,  and  two  officers  of  rank, 
Wooster  and  Arnold.     The  latter  rallied  all  the 


304  CONNECTICUT. 

men  available,  regulars  and  militia,  and  headed 
Tryon  on  his  retreat,  at  Ridgefield.  In  the  battle, 
Wooster  was  mortally  wounded,  and  Tryon  broke 
through  and  resumed  his  way  to  the  Sound.  Ar- 
nold kept  up  the  pursuit  until  the  British  took 
refuge  on  the  shipping  and  sailed  away.  The  ex- 
pedition was  followed  by  one  from  New  Haven  in 
retaliation.  Colonel  Meigs  crossed  the  Sound  with 
nearly  two  hundred  men  in  whaleboats  to  Sag 
Harbor,  attacked  the  place  a  little  after  midnight, 
captured  it,  and  burned  twelve  vessels,  with  a 
large  amount  of  stores.  He  then  recrossed  the 
Sound  with  ninety  prisoners,  and  without  losing  a 
man. 

In  the  mean  time  Connecticut  had  become  a 
State.  In  May,  1776,  the  people  had  been  formally 
released  from  their  allegiance  to  the  crown ;  and 
in  October  the  general  assembly  passed  an  act 
assuming  the  functions  of  a  State.  The  important 
section  of  the  act  was  the  first,  as  follows  :  "  That 
the  ancient  form  of  civil  government,  contained  in 
the  charter  from  Charles  the  Second,  King  of  Eng- 
land, and  adopted  by  the  people  of  this  State,  shall 
be  and  remain  the  civil  Constitution  of  this  State, 
under  the  sole  authority  of  the  people  thereof,  in- 
dependent of  any  King  or  Prince  whatever.  And 
that  this  Republic  is,  and  shall  forever  be  and  re- 
main, a  free,  sovereign,  and  independent  State,  by 
the  name  of  the  State  of  Connecticut."  The  form 
of  the  act  speaks  what  was  doubtless  always  the 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND  THE  REVOLUTION.    305 

belief  of  the  people,  that  their  charter  derived  its 
validity,  not  from  the  will  of  the  crown,  but  from 
the  assent  of  the  people.  And  the  curious  language 
of  the  last  sentence,  in  which  "  this  Republic  "  de- 
clares itself  to  be  "  a  free,  sovereign,  and  indepen- 
dent State,"  may  serve  to  indicate  something  cf 
the  appearance  which  state  sovereignty  doubtless 
presented  to  the  American  of  1776-89.  It  is  not 
safe  to  take  "  the  United  States  "of  1887  as  ex- 
actly equivalent,  in  the  eyes  of  the  people,  to 
"the  United  States"  of  1776-89.  The  nation 
was  born ;  but  its  constituent  units  were  often 
painfully  unconscious  of  the  birth. 

The  main  theatre  of  war  continued  to  be  out- 
side of  the  State  ;  but  her  troops  shared  in  all  its 
dangers  and  hardships.  The  one  great  business 
of  the  State  authorities  was  to  fill  up  the  State's 
quota  of  men  and  provide  for  their  maintenance  ; 
that  of  the  towns  was  to  fill  up  their  quotas,  and 
to  follow  the  ever- shifting  continental  currency  by 
changing  the  necessary  salaries  as  it  changed.  No 
one  can  follow  the  town  records  without  receiving 
an  increased  respect  for  the  persistent  devotion  of 
the  people  to  the  common  cause.  There  seems  to 
have  been  little  attempt  to  shift  burdens  to  the 
shoulders  of  others  ;  but  each  town  accepted  its 
share  as  a  necessary  fact,  and  strained  every  en- 
ergy  to  meet  it.  It  would  have  been  hardly  pos- 
sible that  such  devotion  should  have  been  purely 
unselfish ;  the  fact  was  that,  safe  as  the  State  was 

20 


806  CONNECTICUT. 

in  general,  there  was  hardly  a  moment  when  it 
was  not  exposed  to  the  possibility  of  harassing  par- 
tisan warfare.  The  British  headquarters  in  New 
York  city  were  so  near,  and  transportation  by 
ship  was  so  easy,  that  the  whole  coast  of  the  State 
was  exposed.  In  addition  to  the  services  of  her 
regular  levies,  the  purely  State  troops  were  com- 
pelled to  serve  tours  of  duty  on  the  coast;  and 
detachments  were  posted  in  the  various  exposed 
towns.  Putnam  had  been  in  command  of  the 
American  forces,  and  his  headquarters  had  been 
at  Peekskill,  within  supporting  distance  of  the 
new  post  at  West  Point,  whose  importance  he  had 
been  the  first  to  see  and  secure.  He  removed  his 
headquarters  to  Reading  in  1778,  and  from  that 
place  fulfilled  his  old  duty,  while  aiding  in  the  de- 
fense of  the  exposed  portions  of  his  own  State.  It 
was  during  this  period  of  service  that  he  met  with 
the  adventure  at  Horse  Neck,  which  is  one  of  the 
best  known  of  his  eventful  life,  though  it  was 
probably  one  of  which  he  thought  the  least.  One 
of  the  most  urgent  needs  of  the  "  rebels "  was 
salt.  It  was  made  roughly  at  various  places  on 
the  coast,  and,  with  all  its  inevitable  impurities, 
was  grateful  enough  to  the  people.  One  of  these 
salt-works  was  at  Horse  Neck,  and  a  British  force 
came  up  from  New  York  to  destroy  it.  Putnam 
delayed  so  long  in  providing  for  his  men's  retreat 
that  his  only  way  of  escape  was  to  plunge  on  horse- 
back down  a  long  flight  of  stone  steps,  his  baffled 
pursuers    reining    in    at   the    top   and  contenting 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND  THE  REVOLUTION.    307 

themselves  with  firing  inefEectually  at  him  as  he 
went. 

Early  in  the  winter  of  1779-80,  Putnam  under- 
took a  visit  to  his  home  in  Pomfret,  but  was 
struck  with  partial  paralysis  on  his  journey.  He 
never  recovered  from  it,  but  was  disabled  until 
his  death  in  1790.  Washington  thus  lost  the  ser- 
vices of  one  on  whom  he  had  always  leaned 
largely.  He  was  perhaps  the  most  uneducated 
officer  in  the  army ;  his  name  was  synonymous  in 
the  British  view  with  bad  manners  and  coarse- 
ness ;  his  portrait  is  that  of  a  gross,  heavy  man, 
as  far  removed  as  possible  from  the  popular  no- 
tion of  the  Connecticut  Yankee  ;  but  his  prompt 
decision,  natural  intelligence,  and  unswerving  de- 
termination were  just  the  qualities  that  would  rec- 
ommend him  equally  to  his  men  and  to  the  com- 
mander-in-chief. They  are  shown  in  his  letter  of 
the  previous  year  to  Tryon,  in  a  case  in  which  the 
latter  had  threatened  retaliation.  If  it  is  not  gen- 
uine, it  is  a  most  skillful  forgery,  for  it  speaks  the 
voice  of  Putnam  in  every  line.    It  is  as  follows  :  — 

"  Sir  :  Nathan  Palmer,  a  lieutenant  in  your 
King's  service,  was  taken  in  my  camp  as  a  spy. 
He  was  tried  as  a  spy ;  he  was  condemned  as  a 
spy  ;  and  you  may  rest  assured,  sir,  he  shall  be 
hanged  as  a  spy.        I  have  the  honor  to  be,  &c. 

Israel  Putnam. 
His  Excellency,  Governor  Tryon. 

P.  S.  Afternoon.     He  is  hanged^ 


308  CONNECTICUT. 

The  Fourth  of  July  in  1779  fell  on  Sunday,  and 
the  people  of  New  Haven  had  made  arrangements 
to  celebrate  the  Declaration  of  American  Inde- 
pendence on  the  day  after.  Before  the  exercises 
had  fairly  begun,  the  town  was  thrown  into  con- 
sternation by  the  news  that  Tryon's  fleet  and 
forces,  numbering  3,000  men  in  some  forty-eight 
vessels,  had  dropped  anchor  near  West  Haven  at 
five  o'clock  that  morning,  and  were  on  the  march 
for  New  Haven.  They  came  in  two  detachments, 
of  1,500  men  each,  one  marching  from  West  Ha- 
ven, the  other  attacking  and  capturing  a  small 
fort  at  Black  Rock  on  its  way.  The  first  detach- 
ment met  some  resistance,  and  entered  the  town 
by  the  Derby  Road.  By  one  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon all  resistance  had  been  overcome,  and  the 
invaders  had  met  at  the  green,  then  an  unsightly 
common.  The  town  was  given  up  to  plunder  un- 
til the  following  morning,  when  the  British  retired 
as  suddenly  as  they  had  come.  They  had  been 
guilty  of  many  acts  of  the  most  bai'barous  cruelty, 
the  accounts  of  which  are  preserved  in  tradition 
or  print ;  they  had  inflicted  a  money  loss  of  some 
^6  25,000,  but  the  buildings  of  the  college  and  the 
other  public  edifices  were  undamaged. 

Sailing  along  the  coast,  Try  on  landed  at  Fair- 
field, July  8,  and  destroyed  that  place.  Here 
public  and  private  buildings  alike  were  fired. 
The  same  was  the  case  at  the  village  of  Green's 
Farms  the  next   morning;  and  then  the  British 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.     309 

commander  called  off  liis  dogs  for  a  little  space. 
They  crossed  the  Sound  to  Huntington  Bay,  and 
remained  there  until  July  11.  Recrossing  the 
Sound  to  Norwalk,  they  spent  the  day  in  the  work 
of  destruction.  When  they  took  their  departure, 
the  quiet  little  town  had  disappeared  but  for  the 
smoke  of  its  torment,  which  hung  over  the  spot 
where  it  had  been.  By  this  time  the  population 
of  the  interior  was  mustering  to  meet  Try  on  at 
his  next  landing,  and  he  prudently  retired  to 
headquarters.  He  had  inflicted  upon  Connecti- 
cut a  loss  of  about  .£250,000,  as  appeared  by 
the  proven  claims  for  which  the  general  assembly, 
as  before  stated,  allotted  500,000  acres  of  north- 
western lands  in  1792.  But  he  had  not  broken 
the  spirit  of  the  people  ;  and  his  own  loss  in  men, 
nearly  three  hundred,  was  enough  to  convince 
him  that  such  attacks  were  no  longer  to  take  rank 
as  purely  plundering  expeditions,  but  were  to  be 
attended  with  some  danger  to  life  and  limb. 
Such  knowledge  was  sufficient  to  appease  his 
martial  ardor,  and  he  vexed  Connecticut  very 
little  more. 

Try  on  had  been  so  injudicious  as  to  give  special 
protection  to  the  property  of  Tories  in  his  work  ; 
and  the  Tories  had  been  so  imprudent  as  not  only 
to  receive  the  protection  but  to  exult  in  it.  A  few 
of  them  had  taken  the  inevitable  next  step,  by 
retiring  with  Tryon's  fleet ;  but  others  had  the 
weakness  or  folly  to  remain.     In  May,  1778,  the 


310  CONNECTICUT. 

general  assembly  had  begun  the  process  of  confis- 
cation against  avowed  or  absconding  Tories,  under 
the  euphemism  of  "  settling  their  estates ;  "  the 
Tryon  episode  naturally  had  the  effect  of  stimu- 
lating the  energy  of  the  State  authorities  in  en- 
forcing the  process,  and  of  provoking  even  a  more 
bitter  feeling  of  the  Whigs  against  those  Tories 
who  retained  their  former  dwelling-places.  Some 
of  the  names  which  had  been  most  influential  in 
the  history  of  the  colony  disappeared  at  this  time 
from  the  records  of  the  State,  and  their  property 
passed  into  other  hands.  But  some  of  the  former 
holders  remained,  and  their  influence  in  subse- 
quent politics  is  a  fair  witness  to  the  clemency  of 
Connecticut.  Dr.  Peters  himself  returned  to  his 
former  parish  in  1806,  for  a  visit,  and  found  that 
even  his  "  History  "  had  been  condoned.  He  died 
at  New  York  in  1826 ;  and  his  nephew  was  gov- 
ernor of  Connecticut  in  1831-32. 

The  Connecticut  authorities  had  been  indefati- 
gable in  raising  and  provisioning  troops,  and  her 
people  had  been  equally  earnest  in  offering  their 
services.  In  the  number  of  men  contributed  she 
stood  second  of  the  States  with  31,939  men,  Mas- 
sachusetts being  first  with  67,907.  Considering 
differences  of  population,  and  more  especially  dif- 
ferences in  immediate  danger,  Connecticut's  quota 
stands  out  well  beside  the  25,678  of  Pennsylva- 
nia, the  17,781  of  New  York,  the  6,417  of  South 
Carolina,  or  the  2,679  of  Georgia.      In  general 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.    311 

orders  of  June  16,  1782,  Washington  spoke  of  the 
Connecticut  Brigade  as  "  composed  of  as  fine  a 
body  of  men  as  any  in  the  army ;  "  and  he  ex- 
pressed a  wish  for  a  general  review  of  the  men,  to 
decide  the  relative  proficiency  of  the  Connecticut 
men.  In  another  order,  issued  two  days  after- 
ward, he  thus  expressed  his  high  opinion  of  the 
State's  line  :  "  The  General  informs  the  Army  he 
had  great  occasion  to  be  satisfied  at  the  review  of 
the  Second  Connecticut  Brigade  yesterday,  espe- 
cially with  the  soldier-like  and  veteran  appearance 
of  the  men,  and  the  exactness  with  which  the  fir- 
ings were  performed.  He  felt  particular  pleasure 
in  observing  the  cleanliness  and  steadiness  of  the 
second  Regiment  under  arms."  And  the  historian 
of  the  commonwealth  may  be  pardoned  for  taking 
a  "  particular  pleasure  "  in  noting  the  fact,  that, 
with  the  exception  of  a  briefer  compliment  to  a 
Massachusetts  brigade,  this  is  the  only  instance  in 
Washington's  Revolutionary  orders  of  such  public 
commendation  of  any  State's  quota.  In  almost 
all  cases  Connecticut  men  were  drafted  into  ser- 
vice outside  of  the  State,  to  make  good  the  defi- 
ciencies of  less  zealous  States.  She  had,  in  addi- 
tion, to  maintain  almost  all  the  defense  of  her  own 
borders,  and  that  while  Long  Island  Sound  was 
under  complete  control  of  the  enemy's  ships.  Her 
success  in  so  doing  almost  stopped  civilized  life 
around  the  Sound.  The  Connecticut  Tories  were 
driven  to  Long  Island,  while  the  Long  Island  Whigs 


312  CONNECTICUT. 

crossed  into  Connecticut ;  and  the  waters  of  the 
Sound  were  harassed  by  almost  continual  skir- 
mishing. When  the  French  forces  were  quartered 
within  the  State,  her  people  enjoyed  a  season  of 
comparative  tranquillity.  When  they  were  with- 
drawn for  the  march  on  Yorktown,  which  was 
planned  by  Washington  and  the  French  leaders 
in  a  meeting  at  Wethersfield,  Arnold,  now  in  the 
British  service,  made  his  raid  on  New  London, 
and  the  State,  as  usual,  was  compelled  to  meet  the 
shock  almost  unsupported, 

Arnold,  a  native  of  Norwich,  knew  the  country 
around  New  London  well,  and  its  defenseless  con- 
dition was  no  secret  to  him.  Two  small  works 
had  been  thrown  up,  forts  Trumbull  and  Gris- 
wold ;  but  the  former  was  open  at  the  rear,  and 
had  a  garrison  of  but  twenty-three  men,  who  were 
ordered  to  retreat  to  the  other  fort  at  the  approach 
of  danger.  Colonel  William  Ledyard  was  in  com- 
mand of  both  forts.  Arnold's  landing  on  the 
morning  of  September  6,  1781,  seems  to  have 
been  a  surprise  to  every  one  in  the  town  ;  and  his 
1,700  roen  were  at  work  on  both  sides  of  the  river 
before  any  effective  preparations  could  be  made 
to  meet  him.  Indeed,  no  such  preparations  could 
have  been  made,  even  with  a  day's  notice  ;  there 
were  no  troops  to  draw  upon.  Fort  Trumbull 
was  taken  with  a  rush  :  Ledyard  drew  in  his  men 
to  Fort  Griswold ;  and  while  Arnold  reserved  to 
himself  the  congenial  task  of  burning  the  town, 


THE  STAMP  ACT  AND   THE  REVOLUTION.    313 

its  dwellings,  warehouses,  and  shipping,  the  next 
in  command,  on  the  other  side  of  the  river,  was 
directed  to  storm  Fort  Griswold. 

The  British  soldier  is  a  noble  animal ;  but  the 
notion  that  he  will  not  strike  an  enemy  who  is 
"  down  "  should  be  relegated  to  the  ante-Buff on= 
ian  period  of  natural  history.  Badajos  was  nei- 
ther the  first  nor  the  last  witness  to  the  contrary  ; 
and  too  many  British  officers  have  put  on  record 
their  impressions  of  the  British  soldier  in  the  mo- 
ment of  victory  for  us  to  be  surprised  at  such  a 
little  matter  as  happened  at  Fort  Griswold.  Tlie 
unusual  circumstance  in  this  case  was  that  the  of- 
ficer in  command  was  the  greatest  brute,  appar- 
ently, of  the  storming  party.  After  an  obstinate 
resistance,  in  which  Ledyard  exhausted  every 
means  of  defense,  and  all  the  British  officers  of 
high  rank  had  been  carried  off  dead  or  dying,  the 
storming  party,  of  which  a  Major  Bromfield  was 
now  left  in  command,  poured  in.  "  Who  com- 
mands this  fort?  "  called  Bromfield.  "I  did,  sir  ; 
but  you  do  now,"  said  Ledyard,  offering  his  sword. 
Bromfield,  infuriated  by  the  unexpected  slaugh- 
ter, seized  the  sword  and  plunged  it  into  Led- 
yard's  breast.  With  such  an  example  from  one 
in  authority,  the  soldiers'  instincts  came  out  at 
their  worst ;  the  defenders  were  bayoneted  where- 
ever  they  sought  refuge,  until  all  but  about  twenty- 
five  of  the  one  hundred  and  fifty  men  in  the  fort 
were  killed  or  desperately  wounded.  The  fire  of 
rage  dying  out  for  want  of  sound  material,  wa8 


314  CONNECTICUT. 

revived  by  the  collection  of  the  wounded  ;  and 
thirty-five  of  these  were  placed  in  a  cart  and 
rolled  down  the  slope,  among  rocks  and  stumps, 
to  be  dashed  to  pieces  at  the  bottom  for  the  amuse- 
ment of  the  soldiers.  The  plea  has  been  offered 
that  the  laws  of  war  allowed  military  execution  of 
the  sort  upon  a  fort  which  persisted  in  a  hopeless 
defense ;  but  this  point  of  the  laws  of  war  has 
probably  never  been  so  strained  before  as  in  this 
case,  and,  in  any  event,  the  wounded  have  com- 
monly been  held  exempt. 

As  Arnold  passed  out  of  New  London  harbor, 
the  Revolutionary  struggle  passed  away  with  him. 
It  had  been  a  time  of  sudden  and  tremendous 
growth,  this  transformation  of  the  colony  into  a 
State,  of  the  disappearance  of  old  ideas  and  of  old 
loyalty,  of  burnings  and  plunderings,  of  life-long 
separations  through  the  fortune  of  war,  of  family 
and  social  disintegration,  of  heavy  taxation  amid 
stringent  poverty,  of  great  burdens  manfully 
borne  ;  but  the  fancy  is  almost  forced  to  picture, 
as  the  crowning  episode  of  the  war,  the  old  com- 
monwealth sitting  among  the  ruins  which  her  re- 
creant son  had  wrought,  and  watching  him  as  he 
sailed  away  to  be  worse  and  less  than  a  foreigner 
to  her  forevermore.  It  may  be  only  a  natural 
shrinking  from  an  unnatural  crime,  or  it  may  be  a 
remnant  of  ancient  controversies,  which  has  made 
the  historians  of  Connecticut  so  careful  to  note  the 
fact  that  Arnold  was  by  blood  a  Rhode  Island 
man. 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE  ADOPTION  OF  THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION. 

The  relations  of  Connecticut  to  the  articles  of 
confederation  were  peculiar.  For  a  century  and 
a  half,  the  full  energy  of  the  commonwealth  had 
been  at  work  to  maintain  the  autonomy  secured 
by  the  charter,  and  to  exclude  from  the  soil  of 
Connecticut  every  vestige  of  authority  not  owning 
the  people  of  Connecticut  as  its  legitimate  source. 
From  this  standpoint,  the  articles,  with  their  ex- 
press and  tacit  attempts  to  reserve  and  strengthen 
state  sovereignty,  were  the  exact  representatives 
of  Connecticut  feeling.  The  vote  in  favor  of  them 
would  have  been  practically  unanimous  in  1781, 
the  year  in  which  they  went  into  effect. 

Other  considerations  soon  compelled  attention. 
One  of  the  first  results  of  the  adoption  of  the  ar- 
ticles, as  has  been  stated,  was  the  ousting  of  Con- 
necticut from  her  western  claims,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  a  reservation  which  seemed  pitiful  alongside 
of  Virginia's  royal  reservation  for  the  satisfaction 
of  her  debts  and  obligations.  Instead  of  the  main- 
tenance of  vast  claims  in  the  Northwest,  her  busi- 
ness was  now  to  secure  her  independence  of  her 


316  CONNECTICUT. 

nearer  neighbors  :  and  this  was  difficult  enough. 
The  desolation  wrought  by  the  Revolutionary  con- 
flict, with  the  features  peculiar  to  it  in  this  quarter 
of  America,  was  of  continuing  effect :  the  towns 
of  the  Connecticut  coast  were  poverty-stricken, 
their  merchants  were  bankrupt ;  there  was  no 
energy  to  spare  among  the  people  for  the  revival 
of  foreign  commerce,  and  the  imports  of  the  State 
were  of  necessity  made  through  Boston  or  New 
York.  Here  they  found  no  amicable  treatment, 
under  the  provisions  of  the  articles  of  confedera- 
tion which  allowed  each  State  to  levy  taxes  on  im- 
ports. Something  like  one  third  of  the  expenses 
of  the  New  York  government  were  paid  by  taxa- 
tion levied  so  as  to  be  borne  by  imports  into  Con- 
necticut ;  even  this  burden  was  not  enough  to  de- 
velop a  domestic  commerce  in  the  subordinate  State; 
and  the  only  resource  available  was  the  poor  one 
of  turning  to  pay,  in  like  manner,  one  third  of  the 
expenses  of  the  Massachusetts  government.  State 
sovereignty  was  very  fine  in  theory ;  but  a  state 
sovereignty  bottomed  on  the  sole  power  of  the 
State  was  found  by  Connecticut  to  be  a  very  poor 
/  resource  for  her.     It  was  not  long  before  the  lead- 

/  ing  minds  of  Connecticut  were  ready  to  give  up 

this  naked  and  deceptive  state  sovereignty  for 
state  rights,  bottomed  on  the  guaranty  of  a  na- 
tional power. 

In  February,  1781,  just  before  the  articles  actu- 
ally went  into  effect,  congress  notified  the  States 


ADOPTION  OF  THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION.    317 

that  it  would  be  absolutely  necessary  for  them  to 
surrender  to  congress  a  limited  power  to  levy  taxes 
on  imports,  in  order  to  satisfy  the  public  debt.  It 
was  essential  that  every  state  legislature  should 
agree  to  this,  and  the  assent  of  Connecticut,  with 
all  but  one  of  the  other  States,  was  balked  by  the 
veto  of  the  smallest  of  the  States,  Rhode  Island. 
Before  Rhode  Island  could  be  reasoned  with,  Vir- 
ginia repealed  her  assenting  act,  and  the  veto 
was  made  more  positive.  For  the  next  half-dozen 
years  the  position  of  Connecticut  was  unchanged  : 
her  people,  instinctively  willing  for  national  taxa- 
tion, were  moved  by  what  may  seem  an  unreason- 
able jealousy  of  the  Society  of  the  Cincinnati,  and 
were  unwilling  to  see  a  national  taxing  power 
under  its  control  or  in  its  interest.  For  this,  how- 
ever, there  was  some  excuse.  The  feeling  of  the 
military  authorities  toward  the  privates  of  the 
Revolutionary  armies  would  seem  odd  to  men  of 
the  present  day.  To  Washington,  for  example,  it 
was  always  the  oflScers  who  were  the  "gentlemen 
of  the  army ;  "  the  privates  were  food  for  powder, 
well  enough  off  with. rations,  clothes,  and  glory. 
When  "  half-pay  for  the  army  "  was  proposed  by 
congress  in  1778,  it  was  only  for  the  commissioned 
officers ;  $80  apiece  in  continental  money  at  the 
end  of  the  war  was  thought  a  quite  liberal  provi- 
sion for  the  insignificant  privates.  It  may  very 
easily  be  seen  that  such  notions  as  these  were  not 
likely  to  be  popular  in  an  ultra-democratic  State 


318  CONNECTICUT. 

like  Connecticut ;  and  it  is  probable  that  her  Rev- 
olutionary privates  were  as  bitter  in  their  opposi- 
tion to  the  Society  of  the  Cincinnati  as  those  who 
had  not  entered  the  army  at  all.  It  was  not  "  the 
old  leaven  of  Silas  Deane,"  as  Hamilton  thought, 
but  the  instincts  of  democracy,  that  fought  against 
caste  distinctions  in  the  army,  as  elsewhere. 

In  April,  1783,  a  still  more  limited  proposition 
to  grant  taxing  powers  to  congress,  with  a  recom- 
mendation to  change  the  basis  of  contribution  from 
land  to  number  of  inhabitants,  was  sent  out  to  the 
States.  Connecticut  assented  at  once,  with  New 
Jersey,  New  Hampshire,  Massachusetts,  Virginia, 
North  and  South  Carolina ;  but  the  other  States 
assented  so  slowly  or  so  grudgingly  that  the  proposi- 
tion hung  fire.  When  New  York  gave  it  the  coup 
de  grace  in  1786,  Connecticut  had  been  on  the  side 
of  the  proposed  reformation  in  every  vote.  She  sent 
no  representatives  to  the  Annapolis  Convention  of 
1786  ;  and  Knox  attributes  her  neglect  or  refusal 
to  "  jealousy."  With  all  respect  to  his  judgment, 
i)  must  be  noted  that  the  meeting  of  that  body 
took  place  in  the  height  of  the  anti- Cincinnati  ex- 
citement ;  that  this  seed  of  discontent  was  removed 
before  the  Philadelphia  Convention  met ;  and  that 
Connecticut's  delegates  to  that  body  showed  that 
her  previous  "jealousy"  had  been  of  a  nature  to 
which  neither  Knox  nor  any  other  typical  Revolu- 
tionary officer  could  do  substantial  justice,  much 
less  deal  kindly  with  it. 


ADOPTION  OF  THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION.    319 

In  May,  1787,  the  general  assembly  of  Connec- 
ticut appointed  William  Samuel  Johnson,  Roger 
Sherman,  and  Oliver  Ellsworth  delegates  to  the 
federal  convention  at  Philadelphia,  with  instruc- 
tions to  meet  the  delegates  of  the  other  States,  and 
"  to  discuss  upon  such  alterations  and  provisions, 
agreeably  to  the  general  principles  of  republican 
government,  as  they  shall  think  proper  to  render 
the  Federal  Constitution  adequate  to  the  exigencies 
of  government  and  the  preservation  of  the  Union." 
The  convention  met  May  14 ;  a  majority  of  the 
States  were  ready  for  business  May  25  ;  and  Ells- 
worth attended  May  28,  Sherman  May  30,  and 
Johnson  June  2.  From  the  first  appearance  of 
Ellsworth  the  Connecticut  delegation  was  in  the 
thick  of  every  struggle.  It  has  been  said  that  its 
members  "  aspired  to  act  as  mediators "  in  the 
convention  ;  if  so,  the  aspiration  was  justified  by  its 
fruits,  for  the  ability  of  the  delegates  was  reinforced 
by  the  peculiar  position  of  their  State.  Sherman, 
though  of  Massachusetts  by  birth,  was  of  that 
family  which  has  always  been  strong  in  the  Con- 
necticut Valley,  and  has  since  blossomed  into  new 
power  in  Ohio.  Johnson,  of  the  Stratford  blood 
which  had  introduced  Episcopacy  into  Connecticut, 
was  yet  a  devoted  and  trusted  Whig  throughout 
the  Revolution.  Ellsworth,  subsequently  chief 
justice  of  the  United  States  and  of  his  State,  was 
of  a  Windsor  family.  The  three  were  probably 
the  ablest  lawyers  in   the  State,  represented  all 


320  CONNECTICUT. 

shades  of  opinion  in  it,  and  all  its  territorial  divi- 
sions, and  were  united  only  in  the  desire  for  a 
good  national  government.  No  interest  in  the 
State  could  claim  more  than  one  of  them  ;  they  be- 
longed to  the  whole  State  and  to  the  Union. 

The  attitude  of  Connecticut  has  been  repre- 
sented as  that  of  a  "  small  State,"  intent  only  on 
obtaining  every  possible  reservation  of  state  sover- 
eignty. Such  a  representation  is  grossly  unfair. 
There  was  no  reason  for  it  a  priori.  The  State 
had  nothing  to  gain  by  it.  Her  territorial  limits 
were  distinctly  closed  for  the  future  ;  and  she  was 
wisely  and  justly  determined  that  the  new  govern- 
ment should  not  take  the  form  proposed  by  Vir- 
ginia, a  congress  of  two  houses,  both  chosen  by  the 
States  in  direct  proportion  to  population,  with  a 
president  and  judiciary  appointed  by  this  congress, 
so  that  a  caucus,  or  "  deal,"  by  a  few  large  States 
would  give  them  absolute  control  of  the  govern- 
ment in  all  its  branches.  This  latter  proposition 
would  in  reality  have  been  the  greatest  of  calami- 
ties for  a  real  development  of  national  spirit  and 
power.  Connecticut  desired  a  sound  and  practical 
national  government,  and  the  path  to  it  was 
marked  out  for  her  delegates  by  their  own  com- 
monwealth's development  and  history  for  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years. 

Through  this  long  period,  Connecticut  had  been 
the  only  colony,  with  the  exception  of  Rhode 
Island  (unrepresented  in  this  convention),  which 


ADOPTION  OF  THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION.    321 

had  had  a  governor  and  council,  chosen  by  majority 
vote  and  by  almost  universal  suffrage ;  her  dele- 
gates were  therefore  quite  prepared  for  the  pro- 
position that  at  least  a  part  of  the  new  federal 
government  should  be  chosen  in  much  the  same 
way.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  development  of 
new  towns,  Connecticut  had  always  been  careful 
to  maintain  the  substantial  equality  of  each  town- 
ship in  at  least  one  branch  of  her  government ; 
her  delegates  were  therefore  quite  prepared  for  the 
proposition  that  at  least  a  part  of  the  new  federal 
government  should  similarly  recognize  the  equality 
of  the  States.  Her  combination  of  commonwealth 
and  town  rights  had  worked  so  simply  and  natu- 
rally that  her  delegates  were  quite  prepared  to 
suggest  a  similar  combination  of  national  and  state 
rights  as  the  foundation  of  the  new  government. 
The  circumstances  were  enough  to  clear  their 
mental  vision,  to  enable  them  to  look  calmly  and 
judiciously  at  every  new  proposition,  and  to  make 
them  real  "  mediators."  This  is  the  crowning 
glory  of  the  system  which  Hooker  inaugurated 
in  the  wilderness,  and  of  the  commonwealth  of 
Connecticut.  For  a  century  and  a  half,  she  had 
been  maintaining  the  rudimentary  form  of  that 
mixture  of  the  national  and  federal  elements  which 
are  now  united  in  our  federal  government  and  give 
it  its  strength.  This  system  had  bred  up  a  race  of 
public  men  who  were  accustomed  to  it.  Their 
chosen  men  went  as  delegates  to  the  convention, 

21 


322  CONNECTICUT. 

and  were  urged  at  every  step  in  the  line  whicli 
Hooker  had  marked  out  for  them,  and  which  their 
commonwealth  had  been  making  straight  for  them 
for  a  hundred  and  fifty  years.  It  is  hardly  too 
much  to  say  that  the  birth  of  the  constitution  was 
merely  the  grafting  of  the  Connecticut  system  on 
the  stock  of  the  old  confederation,  where  it  has 
grown  into  richer  luxuriance  than  Hooker  could 
ever  have  dreamed  of. 

The  proceedings  of  the  convention,  in  dealing 
with  the  legislative,  executive,  and  judicial  ele- 
ments of  the  constitution,  are  so  voluminous  and 
complicated,  and  Sherman,  Ellsworth,  and  Johnson 
made  up  so  large  a  part  of  almost  every  debate, 
that  the  reader  of  the  convention's  proceedings 
may  easily  become  confused,  and  will  be  apt  to 
conclude  that,  able  as  these  men  were,  they  simply 
contributed  detached  portions  of  the  work  ;  and 
thus  the  essential  service  of  the  Connecticut  com- 
monwealth may  be  altogether  lost  sight  of.  It  is 
far  better  to  fix  the  attention  on  one  point  of  time, 
the  most  critical,  perhaps,  of  the  convention,  and 
thus  to  see  how  the  whole  force  which  had  been 
accumulating  for  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  came 
in  at  the  right  time  to  turn  the  convention  into  the 
exact  track  which  made  permanent  success  pos- 
sible, against  the  desires  of  the  mass  of  the  mem- 
bers. It  should  be  remembered,  also,  that  Con- 
necticut delegates  had  strong  grounds  of  appeal  to 
the  confidence  of  their  fellows  through  the  course 


ADOPTION  OF  THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION.    323 

of  the  commonwealth  in  the  public  affairs  of  the 
previous  half-dozen  years.  She  was  evidently  dis- 
interested, with  no  selfish  schemes  to  work  for  and 
no  selfish  object  to  gain.  Her  population  gave 
her  respect  in  the  eyes  of  the  large  States.  Hei 
democracy  gave  the  small  States  confidence  in  her. 
Her  position  was  one  of  unusual  advantage  ;  but 
it  would  have  been  worthless  but  for  the  long  years 
of  preparation  which  had  been  begun  in  the  three 
little  towns  on  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut. 

The  two  plans  which  came  to  the  front  in  the 
opening  hours  of  the  convention  —  the  "  Virginia 
Plan,"  presented  by  Randolph,  and  the  "  Jersey 
Plan,"  pi'esented  by  Patterson  —  are  usually  de- 
scribed as  respectively  the  "  National  "  and  the 
"  State  Sovereignty  "  plans.  Nothing  could  be 
more  misleading  than  such  a  classification  ;  neither 
had  anything  of  the  spirit  of  nationality  in  it.  The 
Virginia  plan,  giving  control  of  both  houses  of 
congress  to  numbers,  and  control  of  the  executive 
and  judiciary  to  the  two  houses,  was  merely  a 
scheme  to  secure  the  bulk  of  the  spoils  to  the  com- 
bination of  a  few  large  States ;  the  Jersey  plan, 
continuing  the  articles  of  confederation,  with  the 
power  of  coercing  insubordinate  States,  was  a 
counter-scheme  to  insure  the  safety  of  the  small 
States  against  the  large  ones.  The  futility  of  the 
appellation  "  national  "  may  be  seen  in  the  disgust 
with  which  the  large-State  men  looked  at  their  own 
plan  when  Connecticut  had  forced  a  really  national 


824  CONNECTICUT. 

element  into  it.     They  no  longer  loved  their  off- 
spring. 

The  discussion  of  the  two  plans  ran  on  through 
the  month  of  June.  Between  the  two  parties,  and 
belonging  to  neither,  was  Connecticut,  and  her 
unswerving  position  was  first  made  public  on  the 
11th  of  June.  Here  were  two  sets  of  States :  one 
voting  steadily  for  proportional  representation  in 
both  of  two  houses,  the  other  voting  as  steadily  for 
a  single  house  and  absolute  State  equality  in  that. 
In  the  first  class  were  usually  Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  South 
Carolina,  and  Georgia;  in  the  second,  New  York, 
New  Jersey,  Delaware,  and  Mai'vland.  It  is  odd 
that  great  expectations  of  coming  immigration 
kept  the  Southern  States  in  the  column  of  "  large  " 
States,  while  New  York,  without  a  thought  of  her 
coming  western  expansion,  posed  contentedly  as  a 
"  small  "  State.  The  discussions  of  the  successive 
items  of  the  rival  plans  were  conducted  daily  in 
committee  of  the  whole  house,  and  Connecticut 
seized  the  opportunity  to  declare  her  position,  June 
11.  On  motion  of  Sherman,  slightly  amended  by 
King,  it  was  voted  that  representation  in  the  first 
branch  of  the  national  legislature  should  be  pro- 
portional, not  equal.  This  was  a  "large  State" 
proposition,  but  Connecticut  voted  for  it,  placing 
herself  in  the  large-State  column,  and  making  the 
vote  seven  in  favor,  three  against,  and  one  (Mary- 
land) divided.     Then  Sherman,  seconded  by  his 


ADOPTION  OF  THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION.     325 

own  colleague  Ellsworth,  as  if  to  make  the  attitude 
of  their  State  more  pronounced,  moved  that  each 
State  have  a  vote  in  the  second  branch  (the  sen- 
ate). This  was  a  practical  incorporation  of  the 
small-State  proposition,  and  the  large  States  voted 
it  down,  six  to  five.  From  this  time  on,  the  pro- 
position of  State  equality  in  the  upper,  and  pro- 
portionate representation  in  the  lower  house  of 
congress  was  renewed  again  and  again  by  the  Con- 
necticut delegates,  was  commonly  cited  as  -"  the 
Connecticut  proposal,"  and  was  regularly  voted 
down  by  six  to  five  until  July  2.  This  steady 
vote  of  Connecticut  with  the  small  States  made 
that  a  minority  not  to  be  disregarded ;  and,  as 
passion  rose  higher  until  a  public  threat  was  made 
that  the  small  States  would  confederate  and  find  a 
foreign  power  which  would  take  them  by  the  hand 
for  their  protection,  the  cool,  deliberate,  and  per- 
sistently offered  compromise  of  Connecticut  be- 
came harder  to  resist.  On  the  2d  of  July,  the 
large-State  delegates  showed  the  first  symptoms  of 
breaking,  by  referring  the  Connecticut  proposal  to 
a  committee  of  one  from  each  State.  We  have  no 
means  of  knowing  the  proceedings  of  the  commit- 
tee, but  they  must  have  been  interesting.  It  is 
only  known  that  Franklin's  influence  was  cast  for 
the  Connecticut  proposal ;  and  that  it  was  reported 
favorably,  July  5.  The  report  met  a  storm  of 
opposition.  Madison  "  only  restrained  himself 
from  animadverting  on  the    report  from   the  re- 


326  CONNECTICUT. 

spect  he  bore  to  the  members  of  the  committee." 
Wilson  angrily  exclaimed  that  the  committee  had 
exceeded  their  powers.  On  the  7th  of  July,  North 
Carolina  came  over  to  the  Connecticut  proposal,  and 
the  report  of  the  committee  was  at  last  adopted 
by  a  vote  of  six  States  for  it,  Pennsylvania,  Vir- 
ginia, and  South  Carolina  against  it,  and  Massa- 
chusetts and  Georgia  divided.  The  great  question 
was  settled,  and  the  Connecticut  proposal  went  on 
the  26th  of  July  to  a  committee  of  detail,  which 
reported  the  constitution  of  the  senate,  much  as  it 
was  finally  adopted. 

With  this  achievement,  Connecticut's  work  in 
the  convention  was  really  finished.  Her  delegates 
constantly  lent  the  great  weight  of  their  legal 
ability  and  strong  common  sense,  reinforced  by 
the  general  confidence  in  them,  to  the  subsequent 
debates  ;  but  their  leadership,  assumed  unwillingly 
and  only  from  a  sense  of  duty,  was  dropped  aa 
soon  as  the  occasion  which  called  for  it  was  over. 
The  system  of  complete  local  liberty,  with  a 
limited  but  concentrated  central  power,  under 
which  the  Connecticut  river  towns  had  filled  out 
their  boundaries  and  had  struggled  desperately 
but  vainly  for  expansion  abroad,  had  passed  into 
a  wider  field,  where  it  was  to  have  a  wider  success. 
Governor  Huntington  was  a  hearty  supporter  of 
the  proposed  constitution ;  the  assembly  unani- 
mously called  a  convention  to  consider  it  ;  and 
that  body  met  at  Hartford,  and  ratified  the  consti. 


ADOPTION  OF  THE  FEDERAL  CONSTITUTION.    327 

tution,  January  9,  1788,  by  a  vote  of  one  hundred 
and  twenty-eight  to  forty.  Ellsworth  and  John- 
son received  the  deserved  honor  of  being  chosen  as 
the  State's  first  representatives  in  the  senate  of  the 
United  States;  and  the  commonwealth  of  Con- 
necticut became  merged  in  the  greater  common- 
wealth of  the  United  States,  its  own  lineal  suc- 
cessor. 


CHAPTER  XViri. 

INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT. 

The  development  of  Connecticut  under  the 
constitution  has  been  a  curious  but  natural  conse- 
quence of  her  preceding  history.  All  her  institu- 
tions had  tended  to  the  development  of  an  abound- 
ing individualism  among  her  people.  Thrown 
into  any  situation,  a  Connecticut  party  set  at  once 
about  organizing  civil  government,  and  the  indi- 
vidual began  the  promptest  and  most  efl&cient  pre- 
parations for  taking  care  of  himself.  It  was  the 
institutions  of  the  commonwealth,  not  any  wonder- 
ful or  elaborate  system  of  common  schools,  that 
made  the  people  of  Connecticut  what  they  were  ; 
for  the  hopes  of  early  years,  for  a  thorough  com- 
mon-school system,  have  only  been  realized  in 
recent  times.  Until  tbe  new  era  in  popular  edu- 
cation came  in,  the  ordinary  Connecticut  citizen 
had  what  would  now  be  considered  a  very  meagre 
education ;  but  he  had  something  much  better  in 
the  thoroughly  learned  lesson  of  looking  out  for 
himself.  Further,  the  constant  application  of  this 
lesson,  under  the  necessities  of  the  people,  had  de- 
veloped the  class  of  what  are  often  called  "  house- 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  329 

hold  industries  "  very  considerably  before  the  close 
of  the  last  century.  Farmers  and  their  sons  did 
not  lose  the  evenings  or  rainy  days:  these  were 
spent  in  making  nails  and  other  iron  products,  or 
anything  which  would  sell.  All  this,  continued 
through  generations,  took  the  place  of  the  techni- 
cal education  which  is  now  finding  its  way  into 
our  school  systems.  The  consequence  has  been, 
during  the  last  seventy  years,  the  development  of 
the  modern  Connecticut  mechanic  out  of  the  Con- 
necticut agriculturist  of  the  last  century,  and  the 
transformation  of  the  commonwealth  into  a  great 
industrial  community. 

The  devastation  of  the  Revolution  had  rather 
checked  than  stopped  the  internal  development  of 
the  commonwealth.  New  towns  were  erected  even 
during  the  heat  of  the  war,  and  while  so  man}'^  of 
the  old  towns  were  under  plunder  and  fire;  and 
the  attainment  of  peace  was  like  the  throwing 
down  of  a  dam  —  the  new  towns  numbering  two 
in  1784,  five  in  1785,  thirteen  in  1786,  and  ten  be- 
tween that  year  and  the  close  of  the  century.  It 
was  estimated  by  the  convention  of  1787  that  the 
State  then  had  a  population  of  202,000,  exceeded 
only  by  Virginia  (600,000),  Massachusetts 
(352,000),  Pennsylvania  (341,000),  Maryland, 
(254,000),  and  New  York  (238,000).  In  the  as- 
signment  of  representatives  in  congress  before  the 
first  census,  ten  were  given  to  Virginia,  eight  each 
to  Massachusetts  and  Pennsylvania,  six  to  New 


330  CONNECTICUT. 

York  and  Maryland,  and  Connecticut,  North  Caro- 
lina, and  South  Carolina  were  put  on  a  level  with 
five  each.  When  the  first  census  was  taken  it  was 
found  that  the  population  of  the  State  was  237,946, 
making  its  rank  eighth  among  the  States.  The 
second  census,  in  1800,  gave  it  the  same  relative 
rank  with  a  population  of  251,002. 

Almost  all  the  interests  of  this  population  were 
agricultural.  The  commonwealth  was  not  that 
scene  of  busy  activity  which  it  is  to-day,  with 
streams  of  raw  material  pouring  into  it  from  every 
side,  springs  of  manufactured  product  bubbling 
up  in  every  acre,  and  outflowing  in  freight  bound 
to  every  part  of  the  world.  In  1790,  the  activity 
was  altogether  local.  The  whole  commonwealth 
was  dotted  with  towns  ;  but  these  were  the  little 
centres  of  small  agricultural  circles,  with  very 
little  surplus  for  exportation  beyond  that  which 
was  necessary  for  the  support  of  their  own  people. 
The  green  in  the  heart  of  the  town  had  its  church, 
and  leading  to  it  was  a  street,  with  wooden  houses, 
usually  comfortable,  but  often  unpainted,  and  sel- 
dom representing  any  great  amount  of  luxury. 
Each  local  circle  was  able  to  raise  most  of  what 
was  needed  for  its  people ;  exchanges  among  the 
people  made  up  special  deficiencies ;  and  the  peri- 
patetic tailor,  shoemaker,  or  other  workmen  com- 
pleted whatever  was  lacking  in  the  simple  life  of 
a  simple  people.  Pay  was  still  usually  in  kind, 
BO  that  each  little  circle  was  able  to  keep  its  own 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  331 

affairs  in  motion  without  much  reference  to  its 
neighbors.  When  any  unusual  surplus  was  to  be 
exported,  it  was  put  into  some  shape,  such  as 
cattle,  which  could  be  most  easily  transported. 
Mules  for  the  Southern  or  West  Indian  market 
were  a  common  form  ;  and  a  drove  of  mules  on  its 
journey  was  very  likely  to  be  a  Connecticut  pro- 
duct. The  story  is  told  of  John  Randolph,  that, 
seeing  a  drove  of  mules  passing  through  Washing- 
ton, he  pointed  it  out  to  Tracy,  one  of  the  Con- 
necticut senators,  and  said,  in  his  genial  way, 
"  Tracy,  there  go  a  lot  of  your  constituents.'* 
"  Ye-es,"  said  Tracy,  "  going  down  to  Virginia 
to  teach  school." 

If  the  occupations  of  the  people  were  agricul- 
tural, their  institutions  went  far  to  insure  them 
against  any  of  that  tendency  toward  stagnation 
which  had  long  been  associated  with  the  common 
notion  of  purely  agricultural  peoples.  The  Con- 
necticut citizen  of  the  early  years  of  this  century 
was  a  busy  man,  in  some  respects,  for  the  common- 
wealth or  the  town  was  continually  calling  on  him 
to  take  part  in  political  life.  Let  us  try  to  follow 
out  the  political  relations  of  the  citizen  before  the 
adoption  of  the  constitution  of  1818.  Most  of  his 
public  concerns  were  with  the  town.  He  had 
gained  a  legal  residence  there  by  being  born  in  it, 
by  being  received  by  a  vote  of  some  town  meeting, 
by  the  approval  of  the  selectmen,  the  town's  ex- 
ecutive  committee,  or  by  being   chosen  to  some 


832  CONNECTICUT. 

office  by  the  town.  Unless  having  thus  acquired 
residence,  he  was  in  the  town  only  on  sufferance. 
If  there  had  been  any  reason  to  apprehend  that  he 
would  become  a  charge  on  the  town,  it  would  have 
been  the  duty  of  the  selectmen  to  send  him  to  his 
own  town  if  he  had  one  in  the  State,  to  send  him 
out  of  the  State  if  he  belonged  to  another  State,  or 
to  hold  his  entertainer  responsible  for  him.  Sup- 
posing him  to  have  acquired  residence,  he  had  be- 
come a  voter,  on  arriving  at  the  age  of  twenty-one, 
by  reason  of  having  a  freehold  estate  of  an  annual 
value  of  f  7,  or  a  personal  estate  on  the  tax  list  of 
$134,  by  being  approved  by  the  selectmen  as  a 
person  of  good  moral  character,  and  by  taking 
the  freeman's  oath.  Twice  a  year,  as  a  voter,  he 
attended  the  town  elections  for  representatives 
in  the  general  assembly,  at  which  also  the  new 
voters  formally  took  the  freeman's  oath.  At  the 
September  meeting,  he,  with  all  the  other  freemen 
of  the  State,  voted  for  twenty  names,  as  candidates 
for  the  council  or  upper  house  of  the  assembly,  at 
the  election  to  follow  in  April.  The  total  number 
of  votes  cast  for  all  persons  was  transmitted  by 
the  town  officers  to  the  assembly  ;  that  body 
counted  them  and  published  the  twenty  names 
which  stood  highest  on  the  whole  vote  of  the  State  ; 
and  at  the  election  in  April,  when  the  freemen 
came  to  vote  for  representatives  again,  he  voted 
for  twelve  of  the  published  list  to  be  of  the  council 
for  the  following  year.     In  May,  the  general  as- 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  333 

sembly  counted  the  April  vote  from  all  the  towns, 
and  announced  the  names  of  the  fortunate  twelve 
who  stood  highest  and  were  elected.  After  cast- 
ing his  votes  for  the  council,  the  freeman  voted  for 
governor,  lieutenant-governor,  secretary,  and  treas- 
urer ;  and  the  votes  were  sent  in  like  manner  to 
Hartford,  to  be  counted  in  May  under  direction 
of  the  assembly.  Members  of  congress  were 
chosen  in  the  same  way  as  councilors.  The  free- 
men voted  for  eighteen  names  in  April ;  the  assem- 
bly counted  the  votes  in  May,  and  declared  the 
eighteen  names  which  stood  highest ;  the  freemen 
voted  for  seven  of  these  eighteen  in  September ; 
and  the  assembly  declared  the  seven  elect  in  the 
following  month.  Such  were  the  limitations  which 
the  popular  vote  had  imposed  upon  itself  under 
the  charter. 

The  occasion  of  counting  the  votes  was  still 
known  by  its  primitive  name  of  the  general  elec- 
tion, though  it  had  long  ceased  to  be  anything 
more  than  a  canvass  of  votes  already  cast,  and  now 
returned  to  the  general  assembly  as  a  canvass- 
ing body.  Until  about  1836  it  was  an  occasion 
of  solemn  import  and  unusual  magnificence.  The 
governor,  if  he  was  not  a  Hartford  man,  was  met 
on  the  outskirts  of  the  capital,  the  day  before  that 
of  the  great  ceremonial,  by  a  company  of  cavalry, 
and  escorted  to  his  lodgings.  When  he  was  noti- 
fied, on  the  next  morning,  that  the  representa- 
tives had  organized  and  chosen  their  speaker,  he 


334  CONNECTICUT. 

and  they,  "witli  the  council,  the  sheriffs  of  the 
■whole  commonwealth  with  white  staves,  and  the 
clergy,  marched  in  procession  to  the  first  church, 
escorted  by  the  governor's  foot-guards  and  horse- 
guards.  At  the  church,  the  election  sermon  was 
delivered  by  the  preacher  appointed  for  that  ser- 
vice. It  was  no  brief  or  trivial  performance.  The 
election  sermon  of  President  Stiles,  in  1783,  made 
up  120  pages  of  about  300  words  each,  though  he 
certainly  added  matter  before  publication.  At  the 
end  of  the  church  services  the  procession  returned 
to  the  state  house ;  the  votes  were  counted  by  a 
committee  of  the  assembly  ;  the  governor,  lieu- 
tenant-governor, secretary,  treasurer,  and  coun- 
cil for  the  year  were  announced,  and  the  general 
election  was  over.  An  election  ball  occupied  the 
evening.  The  theory  of  the  commonwealth  still 
was,  until  1818,  that  our  supposititious  voter  was 
present  and  voting  for  commonwealth  officers ; 
but  it  had  long  since  ceased  to  be  the  case.  He 
made  one  of  the  spectators  occasionally ;  but,  as  a 
rule,  he  heard  of  the  festivities  from  others. 

The  town  was  the  political  body  which  came 
nearest  him.  Its  annual  meeting  fell  in  Decem- 
ber, when  town  officers  were  chosen  ;  and  a  formi- 
dable list  it  was  and  still  is.  There  were  select- 
men not  more  than  seven  in  number,  a  town 
clerk,  a  town  treasurer,  constables,  surveyors  of 
highways,  fence-viewers,  listers,  collectors,  leather- 
sealers,  grand    jurors,    tithing-men,    hay -wards, 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  335 

chimney-viewers,  gaugers,  packers,  and  sealers  of 
weights  and  measures,  besides  any  other  officers 
whom  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  the  town  re- 
quired. Many  of  these  offices  have  since  fallen 
from  their  once  high  estate,  and  combinations  of 
voters  are  sometimes  formed  with  the  improper 
purpose  of  choosing  unseemly  persons  to  fill 
them  ;  but  in  their  time  they  were  both  ancient 
and  honorable.  At  all  events,  the  multitude  of 
offices  and  the  annual  term  of  office  together 
made  the  opportunities  of  public  service  exceed- 
ingly numerous,  and  the  prohibition  against  refus- 
ing office  under  penalty  of  fine  in  default  of  good 
excuse,  brought  all  citizens  into  the  supply  of 
available  material  for  public  service.  One  conse- 
quence was,  that  there  were  few  freemen  of  Con- 
necticut who  passed  through  life  without  at  some 
time  filling  an  office  on  the  summons  of  their  fel- 
lows. The  town  meeting,  properly  warned  and 
limited  in  its  action  to  the  subjects  specified  in  the 
warning,  was  a  political  school  in  which  the  free- 
man received  his  training ;  the  multitude  of  minor 
offices  provided  higher  courses  for  almost  all  the 
freemen  ;  and  from  the  two  together  the  people 
received  an  uncommonly  good  political  education 
and  a  sense  of  personal  interest  in  public  affairs. 

After  all,  the  main  features  of  the  system  were 
the  town  meeting,  the  constables,  and  the  select- 
men. The  democratic  element  was  supplied  by 
the  town  meeting;    the  element  of  dictatorship, 


336  CONNECTICUT. 

which  seems  to  lurk  somewhere  in  democracy, 
•was  in  the  selectmen  ;  and  the  constables  repre- 
sented the  commonwealth.  The  powers  of  the 
town  meeting  were  rather  more  clearly  defined 
than  those  of  the  selectmen,  probably  for  the  rea- 
son that  the  latter  could  be  held  to  a  stricter  per- 
sonal responsibility.  The  town  meeting  repre- 
sented the  popular  force  ;  when  it  adjourned,  the 
selectmen  were  almost  the  autocrats  of  the  town 
until  the  next  town  meeting.  It  is  worthy  of  note 
that  such  powers  have  so  seldom  been  abused  or 
betrayed,  and  that  men,  often  active  business 
men,  could  have  been  found  for  more  than  two 
centuries,  as  they  still  are  found,  to  manage  with- 
out fee  or  reward  the  complicated,  diflBcult,  and 
sometimes  dangerous  affairs  of  a  Connecticut 
town. 

The  registration  of  births,  marriages,  and  deaths 
was  with  the  town  clerk ;  licenses  to  marry  came 
from  him ;  and  deeds  and  leases  of  lands  within 
the  township  were  registered  with  him.  The  pro- 
bate judge  was  a  town  officer ;  and  the  mass  of 
business  of  this  nature,  a  county  affair  outside  of 
the  influence  of  the  New  England  system,  was 
here  purely  a  town  matter.  Indeed,  it  may  quite 
safely  be  said  that  about  all  the  relations  which 
the  citizen  holds  to  the  county  in  other  States 
than  those  of  New  England,  and  very  many  of  the 
relations  which  he  holds  to  the  State  itself,  he 
held  in  Connecticut  to  the  town  only.     His  little 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  337 

tewn  republic  hemmed  him  and  his  interests  in  on 
every  side,  and  it  was  but  seldom  that  he  became 
conscious  that  there  was  a  larger  and  a  still  larger 
republic  which  also  claimed  his  allegiance  and  in- 
terest. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  description  of 
the  Connecticut  freeman's  political  position  in 
1810  is  vitally  incorrect  for  his  successor  of  1887. 
It  has  been  altered  mainly  by  the  increase  in  the 
number  of  cities,  —  New  Haven,  Hartford,  Bridge- 
port, Norwich,  Water  bury,  Middletown^  Meriden, 
New  London,  and  South  Norwalk,  —  with  their 
introduction  of  stronger  municipal  powers,  and  by 
the  erection  of  "  boroughs,"  or  semi-cities,  in  the 
more  thickly  settled  portions  of  the  townships. 
All  these  steps  are  detractions  from  the  original 
powers  of  the  towns,  and  are  a  tendency  to  diminish 
the  citizen's  dependence  on  the  township.  They 
have  not  yet  been  very  serious,  though  attempts 
to  extend  the  drift  in  this  direction  are  often  re- 
newed. The  essential  thing  to  be  remembered  is, 
that  changes  in  the  commonwealth's  constitution 
have  affected  the  status  of  the  towns  very  little. 
The  original  constitution  was  changed  into  the 
charter,  and  this  into  the  constitution  of  1818  ; 
but  these  changes  were  mainly  of  the  common- 
wealth, and  the  relative  position  or  the  absolute 
powers  of  the  towns  were  hardly  changed  by  any 
of  them.  To  a  remarkable  degree  the  relations 
of  the   Connecticut  citizen   to  his  town  are  the 

22 


338  CONNECTICUT. 

same  as  those  of  his  forefather  when  the  fir^t 
towns  were  planted.  More  than  in  any  other 
New  England  State,  the  original  vigor  of  the  Con- 
necticut town  has  enabled  it  to  keep  pace  with 
the  growing  power  of  the  commonwealth. 

Hartford  and  New  Haven  were  cities  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  century,  having  been  incorporated 
in  1784,  but  both  were  very  far  from  our  notions 
of  a  city.  They  were  little  centres  of  less  than 
4,000  population,  and  the  communication  between 
them  for  passengers,  mails,  and  traffic  was  sup- 
plied by  two  stages  a  week,  leaving  on  Wednes- 
days and  Saturdays.  Each  had  a  few  weekly 
newspapers,  some  shops  with  a  very  miscellane- 
ous stock  in  trade,  and  hardly  any  other  evi- 
dence of  city  life.  Incomes  were  derived,  even  in 
the  cities,  directly  or  mediately,  from  agriculture 
for  the  most  part,  and  they  were  not  large  :  it  was 
rumored,  with  some  natural  hesitation,  that  Pier- 
pont  Edwards,  the  commonwealth's  leading  law- 
yer, enjoyed  a  revenue  of  $2,000  per  annum  from 
his  practice,  but  this  could  not  be  taken  as  a  stand- 
ard. There  were  few  who  were  very  rich,  and 
few  who  were  very  poor  ;  and  the  life  of  the  whole 
commonwealth  was  a  little  fuller  than,  but  almost 
as  equable  and  placid  as  when  there  were  but 
three  towns  in  it.  Banks  and  insurance  companies 
came  into  existence  only  during  the  twenty  years 
1790-1810. 

New  Haven  had  an  advantage  over  Hartford  in 


INDUSTRIAL   DEVELOPMENT.  339 

its  foreign  commerce,  which  had  begun  to  revive 
before  the  Revolutionary  war,  and  had  received 
a  further  impetus  from  the  peace.  Its  "  Long 
Wharf,"  3,500  feet  in  length,  whose  greedy  maw 
had  swallowed  all  that  private  enterprise,  lotteries, 
and  commonwealth  aid  could  offer  it,  was  not  fin- 
ished until  after  1802  ;  but  it  was  in  active  use 
long  before  it  could  be  called  finished,  and  it  was 
the  headquarters  of  foreign  trade.  Its  merchants 
had  their  own  local  spirit,  and  their  "wharf  law'' 
for  the  punishment  of  local  offenses ;  and  their 
ships  went  all  over  the  world,  hardly  any  of  them 
returning  without  a  contribution  of  material  for  the 
wharf.  Thence  sailed  Isaac  Hull,  as  the  captain 
of  a  New  Haven  West  Indiaman,  long  before  he 
thought  of  meeting  the  Guerriere.  Thither  came 
the  Neptune  in  1799,  with  the  richest  cargo  yet 
imported,  its  profits  being  a  quarter  of  a  million, 
and  the  duties  on  the  cargo  being  nearly  $70,000. 
And  here  came  out  again  the  old  feeling  of  the 
"  town-born  "  against  the  "  interlopers,"  who  had 
come  into  the  town  to  share  in  its  prosperity.  It 
is  said  that  one  of  the  town-born  New  Haven  cap- 
tains, being  forced  to  a  jetson  during  a  storm  at 
sea,  cautioned  his  men  to  throw  over  only  the 
goods  of  "  interlopers."  But  the  influence  of  the 
college,  with  that  of  foreign  commerce  and  result- 
ing wealth,  did  much  to  raise  New  Haven  above 
the  general  level  of  the  commonwealth ;  and  city 
life  in  the  modern  sense  had  its  closest  approxi- 


340  CONNECTICUT. 

mation  here.  The  town  poor  were  no  longer  sold 
at  auction.  Geese  and  cattle  were  banished  from 
the  Green,  and  that  part  of  the  city  began  to  take 
on  some  of  the  beauty  which  has  since  made  it  so 
notable  a  spot.  The  city  went  a  step  beyond  its 
contemporaries  in  beginning  a  cemetery  on  modern 
lines,  abandoning  the  nakedly  ugly  New  England 
burying-ground.  There  was  even  an  earnest  but 
vain  effort  to  obtain  a  permanent  supply  of  water 
in  1804. 

While  Hartford  was  in  most  respects  more  pro- 
vincial than  its  rival,  having  only  a  small  trade  in 
West  India  rum  and  molasses,  its  atmosphere  was 
for  some  reasons  much  more  literary.  Perhaps 
some  of  this  tendency  came  from  its  more  frequent 
communication  with  the  outside  world,  through  its 
natural  position  as  a  stopping-place  on  the  road 
from  New  York  to  Boston.  Since  1772,  a  stage 
passed  each  way  once  a  week.  Here  were  the 
writers  so  long  known  collectively  as  "  the  Hart- 
ford wits,"  Lemuel  Hopkins,  Humphreys,  Alsop, 
Trumbull,  the  author  of  "  McFingal,"  and  Theo- 
dore Dwight,  a  younger  brother  of  Dr.  D wight; 
here  they  were  succeeded  by  Percival,  Brainard, 
and  Mrs.  Sigourney,  followed  by  the  more  recent 
writers  who  have  maintained  Hartford's  position 
in  the  world  of  secular  literature ;  and  here  were 
always  strong  ministers,  able  successors  of  the 
leaders  of  the  first  migration.  Noah  Webster  was 
as  yet  known  rather  as  a  grammarian  than  as  a 


INDUSTRIAL   DEVELOPMENT.  341 

lexicographer.  Connecticut  society,  however,  was 
strongly  tinged  with  a  curious  provincialism  in 
the  times  about  1800.  Things  were  done  and 
said  without  special  criticism  which  would  nowa- 
days be  thought  unpardonable.  The  pastor  of  the 
First  Church  was  Nathan  Strong,  the  writer  of  the 
hymn  so  familiar  in  our  hymn-books,  "  Swell  the 
anthem,  raise  the  song."  In  1790  he  and  one  of 
the  leading  members  of  his  flock  entered  into  part- 
nership for  the  purpose  of  managing  a  distillery. 
The  enterprise  was  a  failure ;  and,  as  imprison- 
ment for  debt  was  still  the  law,  the  junior  partner 
prudently  sought  refuge  outside  of  the  common- 
wealth's jurisdiction.  The  ministerial  partner, 
however,  stood  his  ground,  remaining  within  doors 
on  week-days,  and  appearing  on  Sundays,  when 
the  writ  did  not  run,  to  minister  to  his  indulgent 
parishioners.  When  the  financial  difficulty  had 
been  settled,  the  pastor's  troubles  were  over.  He 
continued  his  ministry  until  his  death  in  1816, 
and  was  made  a  doctor  of  divinity  by  the  College 
of  New  Jersey  in  1801.  And  the  poems  of  the 
Hartford  wits,  largely  devoted  to  political  strug- 
gles, have  in  them  a  great  deal  more  of  the  blud- 
geon than  of  the  rapier.  One  must  speculate  on 
the  mental  constitutions  of  the  audience  which 
could  cut  out  a  high  niche  for  the  author  of  such 
poetry  as  this,  which  was  to  be  sung  to  a  famil- 
iar hymn-tune,  as  the  first  of  a  dozen  similar 
stanzas,  describing  a  Democratic  meeting  :  — 


342  CONNECTICUT. 

Ye  tribes  of  Faction,  join  — 

Your  daughters  and  your  wives; 
Moll  Gary  's  come  to  dine, 
And  dance  with  Deacon  Ives. 
Ye  ragged  throng 
Of  Democrats, 
As  thick  as  rats, 
Come  join  the  song. 

Sporadic  efforts  had  been  made  in  the  agricul- 
tural districts  of  the  State  to  introduce  some  pro- 
ducts which  should  be  more  profitable  than  the 
cereals  which  were  the  staple.  The  silk-culture 
had  been  introduced  about  1732,  and  in  1747 
Governor  Law  wore  the  first  coat  and  stockings 
made  of  New  England  silk.  In  1758  the  work 
was  taken  up  by  President  Stiles  of  Yale,  and  by 
Dr.  Aspinwall  of  Mansfield.  The  former  wrote 
up  the  industry,  and  wore  gowns  of  Connecticut 
silk  at  Commencement ;  the  latter  put  the  indus- 
try at  Mansfield  and  its  neighborhood  on  a  foun- 
dation which  has  not  since  been  lost.  One  of  its 
outgrowths  has  been  the  silk-works  developed  by 
the  mechanical  and  artistic  genius  of  the  brothers 
Cheney,  at  Manchester,  near  Hartford,  beginning 
in  a  modest  attempt  to  make  the  lower  grades  of 
silk,  and  rising  to  higher  grades  through  the  inven- 
tion of  improved  machinery. 

Attempts  had  been  made  since  about  1736  to 
introduce  woolen  manufactures  as  a  development 
of  sheep-raising,  and  these  were  revived  after  the 
Revolution.    With  help  from  the  general  assembly, 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  343 

a  manufactory  of  woolens  was  established  at 
Hartford  after  the  peace.  Its  product  was  mainly 
of  the  pepper-and-salt  variety,  but  it  was  good  and 
popular ;  and  a  suit  of  the  factory's  broadcloth 
was  worn  by  President  Washington  at  the  open- 
ing of  Congress  in  1790.  In  1802  a  long  step  was 
taken  in  advance.  David  Humphreys,  of  Derby, 
formerly  Washington's  aide,  now  American  min- 
ister to  Spain,  sent  home  a  flock  of  one  hundred 
merino  sheep.  The  improved  wool  soon  built  up 
a  manufactory  at  Humphreys ville,  near  Derby  ; 
and  a  suit  of  broadcloth  from  it  was  worn  by 
President  Madison  at  his  inauguration  in  1809. 
From  this  beginning,  the  industry  has  grown  and 
flourished  in  the  State ;  and  it  had  not  gone  far 
before  its  influence  was  felt  in  politics. 

The  Connecticut  delegates  in  the  Convention  of 
1787  had  claimed  that  theirs  was  even  then  a 
manufacturing  State.  This  was  rather  a  desire 
than  a  fact.  Since  the  time  of  Wintbrop,  whose 
attainments  in  natural  science  had  led  him  all  over 
the  commonwealth  in  the  effort  to  establish  an 
iron  -  manufacture,  this  branch  of  industry  had 
been  carried  on  with  more  or  less  success.  One 
of  the  first  ventures  at  New  Haven  had  been  the 
establishment  of  the  "  iron  workes ; "  and  the 
erection  of  furnaces  was  encouraged  by  the  as- 
sembly and  by  towns,  through  remission  of  taxes 
and  otherwise,  all  through  the  eighteenth  century. 
In  1716  the  State  encouraged  the  erection  of  a 


344  CONNECTICUT. 

slitting-raill  by  Fitch  &  Co.  by  giving  it  a  legal 
monopoly  of  the  business  for  fifteen  years.  But, 
after  all,  the  normal  condition  of  iron  produc- 
tion was  that  of  a  household  industry.  Each  fur- 
nace was  meant  to  furnish  enough  iron  for  a 
neighborhood ;  and  the  people  of  the  neighbor- 
hood, using  the  intervals  from  agricultural  employ- 
ment in  winter  or  at  night,  converted  the  iron  into 
articles  for  domestic  use,  with  a  surplus  of  such 
things  as  nails  for  exportation.  There  was  not 
yet  enough  stimulus  in  the  industry  to  affect  the 
purely  agricultural  character  of  the  community 
seriously,  but  it  was  a  preparation  for  the  future. 
The  development  of  the  iron  district  of  tlie 
northwestern  part  of  Connecticut,  about  1730, 
had  been  carried  to  a  considerable  extent  before 
the  Revolution,  and  it  seemed  likely  to  make  the 
commonwealth  a  mining  and  manufacturing  com- 
munity. The  deposits  in  Salisbury  and  its  vicin- 
ity were  abundant,  and  the  supply  of  wood,  then 
the  universal  fuel,  was  plentiful.  Encouraged  by 
the  Revolution,  the  production  became  of  great 
importance.  The  cannon  for  the  army  and  nav}^ 
the  heavy  chains  which  barred  the  rivers,  the  ma- 
terials for  gun-barrels  and  other  military  equip- 
ments for  the  Revolutionary  armies,  came  from 
the  works  at  Salisbury,  which  were  never  reached 
by  the  enemy.  The  workmen  considered  the 
Salisbury  iron  superior  to  anything  else  which 
could  be  obtained,  at  home  or  from  abroad,  and 


INDUSTRIAL   DEVELOPMENT.  345 

its  reputation  seems  to  have  been  deserved.  It  is 
still  highly  valued,  and  38,000  tons  of  it  were  pro- 
duced in  1880.  Valuable  as  was  the  supply,  it 
was  not  destined  to  work  a  revolution  in  the  eco- 
nomic life  of  the  people.  When  the  time  came 
for  the  real  race,  it  was  found  that  other  States 
had  a  superior  advantage  in  the  bounty  of  nature, 
which  had  combined  their  iron-beds  with  adjacent 
beds  of  coal ;  and  Connecticut  was  compelled  to 
yield  to  circumstances  and  turn  to  other  industries. 
Before  the  final  industrial  revolution  came  on, 
the  commonwealth  was  convulsed  by  a  political 
revolution,  caused  partially  by  the  first  movements 
of  manufactures,  and  in  its  turn  a  moving  cause  of 
subsequent  developments.  Connecticut  had  been 
Federalist  from  the  first,  and  the  Connecticut 
Federalist  had  become  almost  a  peculiar  type. 
Many  influences  aided  the  development.  The  al- 
most exclusively  agricultural  employment  of  the 
people  rendered  them  very  susceptible  to  the  per- 
sonal influence  of  leading  men,  and  community 
of  religious  belief  strengthened  this  influence. 
The  leading  men  were  often  connected  directly  or 
indirectly  with  commercial  interests,  which  were 
patronized  by  the  Federal  party ;  or  they  were 
leaders  in  the  Congregational  Established  Church, 
the  natural  enemy  of  Jeffersonian  doctrine  and 
prejudices.  The  new  Democratic  party  therefore 
found  in  Connecticut  a  phalanx  impenetrable  to 
all  its  efforts  to  move  it.     Jefferson's  attempt  to 


346  CONNECTICUT. 

establish  a  governmental  influence  in  the  State  in 
1801,  by  removing  Elizur  Goodrich,  the  Federal- 
ist collector  of  the  port  of  New  Haven,  and  ap- 
pointing in  his  place  Samuel  Bishop,  the  vener- 
able father  of  a  rising  young  Democratic  politi- 
cian, merely  made  the  Connecticut  Federalists 
furious  without  converting  them ;  and  their  feel- 
ing was  increased  by  the  embargo,  which  shut  up 
eighty  vessels  in  the  harbor  of  New  Haven  alone, 
and  nearly  ruined  the  commerce  of  the  port.  Even 
after  the  national  downfall  of  the  Federal  party 
in  1800,  when  other  States  yielded  and  chose 
Democratic  electors,  Connecticut  and  Delaware 
were  the  only  States  which  chose  Federal  electors 
at  every  presidential  election,  so  long  as  there 
were  Federalists  to  vote  for. 

The  Episcopal  Church  had  begun  to  raise  its 
head  again  after  the  Revolution,  though  it  was 
still  feeble.  Every  such  symptom  of  revival,  of 
course,  seemed  to  the  Congregationalist  Whig 
simply  a  revival  of  Toryism.  When  the  Episco- 
palians and  other  dissatisfied  elements  in  New 
Haven  won  a  substantial  victory  at  the  first  city 
election  in  1784,  Dr.  Stiles's  diary  takes  it  as  a 
victory  of  the  Tories,  and  adds,  as  a  natural  result 
the  next  month,  "  this  day  town-meeting  voted  to 
re-admit  the  Tories."  The  connection  with  Tory- 
ism became  dimmed  in  time  ;  but  the  grievances 
of  the  dissatisfied  element,  the  Episcopalians,  the 
**  New  Lights,"  the  Sandemanians,  and  other  secta- 


INDUSTRIAL   DEVELOPMENT.  347 

ries,  remained  unabated.  In  1791,  the  act  which 
seemed  to  Congregationalists  the  summit  of  reli- 
gious  freedom  was  passed  :  it  allowed  any  dissent- 
ing society  to  tax  for  the  support  of  its  own  min- 
ister, and  remitted  the  town  tax  to  such  as  should 
lodge  a  certificate  of  their  dissenting  membership 
with  the  clerk  of  an  Established  Church.  This 
was  far  from  satisfactory  to  the  dissenters.  They 
were  discontented  that  all  persons  not  members  of 
any  church  were  still  subject  to  taxation  for  the  ex- 
clusive benefit  of  the  Established  Church ;  they  as- 
serted that  the  privilege  of  certificate  was  thwarted 
by  the  authorities  on  little  or  no  legal  pretext ; 
and  they  complained  that  the  treasury  of  the  com- 
monwealth was  still  put  by  the  assembly  at  the 
service  of  Yale  College,  to  the  exclusion  of  any 
other  denominational  interest. 

Finding  that  the  dissenters  were  not  content 
with  what  had  no  doubt  seemed  large  concessions, 
and  welded  together  more  strongly  by  the  national 
supremacy  of  their  opponents  and  the  ruinous 
embargo  policy,  the  dominant  party  of  Connecti- 
cut redoubled  its  resistance  to  change.  The  Con- 
necticut Democrats  considered  the  charter,  re- 
adopted  in  1776  by  the  assembly,  as  the  corner- 
stone of  their  opponents'  power.  It  had,  they 
said,  left  the  powers  of  government  so  undefined 
that  the  upper  house,  or  council,  consisting  of 
but  twelve  members,  had  gained  an  extreme  influ- 
ence ;  that  seven  of  the  council,  a  majority,  were 


348  CONNECTICUT. 

lawyers,  able  to  "  appoint  all  the  judges,  plead 
before  those  judges,  and  constitute  themselves  a 
supreme  court  of  errors  to  decide  in  the  last  resort 
on  the  laws  of  their  own  making ;  "  and  that  these 
same  men  had  complete  control  of  the  election 
machinery  of  the  State.  They  demanded  a  con- 
stitution under  which  the  legislative,  judicial,  and 
executive  powers  should  be  separated.  In  August, 
1804,  a  convention  of  Democrats,  or  Republicans, 
was  held  at  New  Haven,  and  endorsed  the  pro- 
gramme for  the  autumn  elections.  The  Federal 
majority  rose  higher  than  ever,  and  the  assembly 
at  its  first  meeting  took  steps  to  punish  those  mal- 
contents whom  it  could  reach.  It  deprived  of 
their  commissions  five  justices  of  the  peace  who 
had  been  delegates  to  the  New  Haven  Convention, 
and  censured  one  of  its  own  members  who  had 
spoken  too  warmly  in  their  behalf.  The  offending 
member,  when  called  upon  to  rise  and  receive  his 
reprimand  from  the  speaker,  interposed  the  in- 
genious point  of  order  that  there  was  no  rule  to 
prevent  his  receiving  it  seated ;  and  the  evident 
embarrassment  of  the  speaker  and  assembly  in 
dealing  with  the  point  took  away  much  of  the  dig- 
nity of  the  punishment. 

The  rapid  passage  of  the  embargo  difficulties 
into  open  war  with  Great  Britain  brought  Con- 
necticut Federalism  into  the  broader  field  of  New 
England  Federalism.  The  first  conflict  with  the 
general  government  came  on  the  employment  of 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  349 

the  militia  of  the  State.  The  Constitution  gives 
congress,  and  an  act  of  congress  gave  the  Presi- 
dent, the  power  to  call  out  the  militia  of  the 
States  in  three  distinctly  defined  emergencies,  — 
to  execute  the  laws  of  the  Union,  to  suppress  in- 
surrections, or  to  repel  invasions.  As  the  regular 
army  was  drawn  off  to  invade  Canada,  the  Presi- 
dent called  on  the  States  for  militia  to  do  garrison 
duty  in  its  place.  The  Connecticut  governor, 
Griswold,  asked  in  reply  for  a  specification  of  the 
reason  for  the  call,  for  the  law  that  was  to  be  exe- 
cuted, the  insurrection  that  was  to  be  suppressed, 
or  the  invasion  that  was  to  be  repelled  ;  and  it 
is  not  easy  to  see  how  his  question  was  to  be  an- 
swered or  evaded.  At  all  events,  no  effective  an- 
swer was  made.  Connecticut  provided  a  special 
force  of  2,600  men  for  her  own  defense,  but  en- 
tered her  protest,  through  the  assembly,  that  "  the 
war  was  unnecessary."  The  incidents  of  the  war 
had  little  to  do  with  Connecticut,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  blockade  of  New  London  by  British 
vessels,  and  the  constant  danger  of  attack  there  or 
elsewhere,  against  which  the  State  was  compelled 
to  defend  herself,  as  the  general  government 
seemed  unable  or  unwilling  to  do  so.  In  April, 
1814,  a  British  force  landed  at  Saybrook  and  de- 
stroyed some  stores  ;  and  in  August  the  Stonington 
militia  beat  off  a  squadron  which  attempted  to  land 
there,  killing  and  wounding  seventy-five  men,  with 
the  loss  of  but  a  few  wounded  of  their  own  nuiU' 


350  CONNECTICUT. 

ber.  All  the  credit  due  to  the  State's  persistent 
defense  of  her  own  borders  was  taken  away,  how- 
ever, by  a  charge  which  Decatur  made  without 
even  offering  evidence  for  it.  Having  been  foiled 
several  times  in  attempting  to  put  to  sea,  he 
declared  that  warning  of  his  attempts  had  been 
given  from  the  shore  by  blue-lights ;  and  tbe 
name  "  Blue-light  Federalist "  was  at  once  used 
by  the  administration  party  as  a  good  title  for  the 
dominant  party  of  Connecticut.  It  was  shown,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  blue-lights  were  entirely  un- 
necessary, since  Decatur  had  never  taken  proper 
care  to  keep  British  emissaries  out  of  his  district ; 
but  he  seems  to  have  gone  on  the  assumption  that 
a  failure  by  Decatur  necessarily  implied  treachery 
on  the  part  of  somebody  else. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  go  very  far  into  the  origin 
and  history  of  the  Hartford  Convention,  for  Con- 
necticut had  no  more  special  connection  with  that 
body  than  to  furnish  a  meeting-place  for  it.  The 
grievances  which  led  to  it,  the  neglect  of  the  de- 
fense of  the  coast  by  the  general  government,  and 
the  preponderance  of  Southern  interest  in  the  gov- 
ernment, were  common  to  Connecticut  with  the 
other  New  England  States ;  but  there  may  have 
been  a  reason  for  the  selection  of  the  place. 
Nearly  twenty  years  before,  in  1796,  there  ap- 
peared in  the  "  Connecticut  Courant,"  at  Hartford, 
a  series  of  articles  signed  "  Pelham."  Written 
with  consummate  ability,  and  apparently  from  a 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  351 

profound  prescience  of  the  difficulties  which  the 
Union  was  to  encounter,  the  articles  attempted  to 
show  that  the  Southern  slave-system  made  a  per- 
manent Union  impossible,  and  that  the  Northern 
States  should  prepare  for  separate  national  exist- 
ence. The  tone  of  the  Hartford  Convention's  rec- 
ommendations for  constitutional  changes  have  so 
much  of  the  spirit  of  these  articles  that  one  is  dis- 
posed to  think  that,  if  "  Pelham  "  was  not  a  dele- 
gate, he  was  at  least  a  close  adviser,  and  that  the 
desire  for  his  advice  was  one  reason  for  the  selec- 
tion of  the  place. 

Connecticut's  delegates  to  the  convention  were 
Chauncey  Goodrich,  James  Hillhouse,  John  Tread- 
well,  Zephaniah  Swift,  Calvin  Goddard,  Nathaniel 
Smith,  and  Roger  Minot  Sherman,  the  ablest  men 
of  the  dominant  party.  The  convention  met  with 
closed  doors  in  the  building  in  which  the  council 
of  the  commonwealth  had  been  accustomed  to 
meet,  and  Democratic  leaders  at  Hartford  and 
Washington  looked  for  the  outcome  with  appre- 
hension. The  Episcopal  rector  (afterward  bishop), 
Chase,  declined  to  offer  prayer  at  its  morning 
session,  explaining  that  he  knew  of  no  form  of 
prayer  for  rebellion.  A  fussy  Federal  officer  con- 
tributed much  to  the  excitement  at  first ;  but  the 
substitution  of  Colonel  Jesup  preserved  the  peace, 
except  that  a  squad  of  soldiers  would  now  and  then 
march  around  the  building  during  the  sessions, 
their  fifes  playing  the  "  Rogue's  March."     With 


352  CONNECTICUT. 

the  exception  of  such  little  touches  of  nature  as 
this,  the  proceedings  of  the  convention  are  rather 
a  part  of  national  than  of  local  history. 

The  endorsement  of  the  convention's  recommen- 
dations by  the  general  assembly  apparently  left 
the  Federalist  control  of  the  State  complete.  In 
reality,  it  was  at  death's  door.  The  Methodist 
Church  had  been  established  in  the  State  in  1789, 
and  had  extended  with  rapidity.  It  shared  in  the 
grievances  of  the  dissenting  sects,  and  reinforced 
their  demands  for  abatement.  Finally,  the  Demo- 
cratic party  of  the  State  came  to  the  decision  to 
make  common  cause  with  the  dissenters  of  all 
sects,  and  to  fight  the  political  battle  on  that 
ground.  In  January,  1816,  a  convention  at  New 
Haven  nominated  Oliver  Wolcott  for  governor,  and 
Jared  Ingersoll  for  lieutenant-governor.  Wolcott 
had  been  a  Federalist,  Adams's  secretary  of  the 
treasury,  and  had  been  accused  by  the  Democratic 
newspapers  of  resorting  to  arson  to  cover  up  frauds 
in  his  office.  He  had  since  been  engaged  in  busi- 
ness in  New  York  city.  The  adoption  of  his 
name  indicates  another  element  in  the  alliance. 
The  manufactures  of  the  State,  particularly  in 
wool,  demanded  protection  by  tariff,  and  had  only 
a  Democratic  congress  to  look  to  for  it.  Wolcott 's 
nomination  was  to  give  them  confidence.  Inger- 
soll was  the  Episcopal  end  of  the  ticket.  Thus 
prepared,  the  "  toleration  party,"  as  it  called  it- 
self, went  into  the  election.    The  dominant  party, 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  353 

alarmed  by  the  prospect,  hurried  to  make  conces- 
sions, but  it  was  too  late.  Ingersoll  was  elected, 
and  Wolcott  barely  defeated.  In  1817  both  were 
elected,  with  a  two-thirds  majority  of  the  assem- 
bly. The  first  step  was  to  put  all  sects  on  an 
equality  as  to  taxation  ;  the  next,  to  repeal  the 
"  Stand-up  Law,"  passed  by  the  Federalists  in 
1801,  by  which  votes  were  to  be  cast  in  town- 
meeting  by  rising,  not  by  secret  ballot ;  and  the 
next,  in  June,  1818,  to  call  a  State  convention  to 
frame  a  constitution.  The  convention  met  Au- 
gust 26,  at  Hartford,  with  a  Democratic  majority 
of  only  ten  out  of  two  hundred  members,  just 
enough  to  compel  mature  deliberation  and  wise  de- 
cision. It  adopted  the  present  constitution  Septem- 
ber 15,  which  was  ratified  by  a  slender  majority 
October  5.  The  Democrats  were  rather  more  dis- 
satisfied with  it  than  the  Federalists,  and  many  of 
them  voted  against  it. 

The  constitution  provided  for  a  government  to 
consist  of  a  governor,  lieutenant-governor,  treas- 
urer, secretary,  and  comptroller,  as  State  ofiicers, 
and  a  general  assembly  composed  of  a  senate  and 
a  bouse  of  representatives.  The  State  officers  were 
to  be  chosen  annually  by  ballot,  the  general  assem- 
bly to  choose  when  no  candidate  should  receive  a 
majority  vote.  The  representatives  were  to  be 
chosen  by  the  towns,  the  proportion  of  each  town 
to  be  "  as  at  present  practiced  and  allowed."  The 
erection  of  a  new  town  was  not  to  reduce  the  rep- 

23 


354  CONNECTICUT. 

resentation  of  the  town  or  towns  from  whicli  it 
was  formed,  without  the  consent  of  the  old  towns, 
and  new  towns  were  to  have  one  representative 
only.  The  senate  was  to  be  chosen  by  districts, 
the  districts  at  first  numbering  twelve,  and,  since 
1828,  not  less  than  eighteen  or  more  than  twenty- 
four.  The  meetings  of  the  general  assembly  were 
to  be  annual,  and  held  alternately  at  Hartford  and 
New  Haven.  Since  1873,  Hartford  has  been  the 
sole  capital ;  and,  since  1884,  the  State  officers 
and  representatives  hold  office  for  two  years,  and 
sessions  of  the  general  assembly  are  biennial.  The 
courts  were  to  be  a  supreme  court  of  errors,  a 
superior  court,  and  inferior  courts  to  be  consti- 
tuted by  the  assembly.  The  supreme  and  superior 
court  justices  were  to  hold  office  during  good  be- 
havior ;  their  term  of  office  was  limited  to  eight 
years  in  1856.  Voters  were  to  be  white  males  of 
twenty-one  years  or  over,  and,  as  the  conditions 
were  simplified  in  1815  and  1855,  were  to  have  re- 
sided in  the  State  for  one  year  and  in  the  town  for 
six  months,  were  to  have  sustained  a  good  moral 
character,  and  to  be  able  to  read.  The  selectmen 
of  each  town  were  to  enforce  the  suffrage  and 
election  laws  of  the  State. 

Religious  profession  and  worship  were  to  be  free 
to  all,  and  no  sect  was  to  be  preferred  by  law.  No 
person  was  to  be  compelled  to  join,  associate  with, 
support,  or   remain   a   member  of,  any  religious 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  355 

body  ;  and  all  religious  bodies  were  to  be  entirely 
equal  before  the  law.  Thus  ended  the  connection 
of  church  and  state  in  Connecticut. 

One  consequence  of  the  establishment  of  the 
constitution  was  the  founding  of  two  new  colleges. 
An  Episcopal  academy  had  been  incorporated  at 
Cheshire  in  1801,  but  it  had  been  impossible  to 
obtain  for  it  a  college  charter  from  the  general 
assembly.  In  1823  the  assembly  chartered  it  as 
Washington  College,  locating  it  at  Hartford.  Its 
first  commencement  was  held  in  1827,  with  ten 
graduates.  Its  connection  with  its  church  has  be- 
come closer  during  the  intervening  years,  and  its 
work,  in  conjunction  with  the  related  Theological 
Seminary  until  1851,  has  been  of  the  greatest  ser- 
vice in  the  training  of  clergymen.  In  1845  its 
name  was  changed  to  Trinity  College.  Its  prop- 
erty is  now  valued  at  over  a  million  dollars,  and 
its  buildinofs  are  amonsf  the  finest  in  Hartford.  Its 
presidents  have  been :  Bishop  Brownell,  1823-31  •. 
Dr.  Wheaton,  1831-37 ;  Dr.  Silas  Totten,  1837- 
48;  Dr.  John  Williams,  1848-53;  Dr.  D.  R. 
Goodwin,  1853-60;  Dr.  Samuel  Eliot,  1860-64; 
Dr.  J.  B.  Kerfoot,  1864-66;  Dr.  Abner  Jackson, 
1867-74 ;  Dr.  T.  R.  Pynchon,  1874-83  ;  and  Dr. 
George  W.  Smith,  1883.  The  Methodist  Episco- 
pal Church  in  the  State  also  desired  an  institution 
for  higher  education,  and  it  obtained  a  charter  for 
Wesleyan  University  without  difficulty  in  1829, 
placing   it  at   Middletown.     Its   presidents  have 


356  CONNECTICUT. 

been:  Dr.  Wilbur  Fisk,  1831-39;  Dr.  Stephen 
Olin,  1839-41 ;  Dr.  Nathan  Bangs,  1841-42  ;  Dr. 
Stephen  Olin,  1842-51 ;  Dr.  A.  W.  Smith,  1851- 
67  ;  Dr.  Joseph  Cummings,  1857-75 ;  Dr.  Cyrus 
D.  Foss,  1875-80  ;  and  Dr.  John  W.  Beach,  1880. 
Its  work  and  resources  have  increased  until  its 
productive  funds  are  now  about  1700,000,  and  the 
annual  income  from  them  about  $40,000. 

The  constitution  has  remained  fairly  satisfactory 
during  the  subsequent  growth  of  the  State,  except 
that  the  representation  of  the  towns  has  frequently 
given  control  of  the  general  assembly  to  a  minority 
of  the  popular  vote  ;  and  efforts  have  been  made, 
though  as  yet  without  success,  to  equalize  repre- 
sentation. Whatever  may  be  the  present  defects 
of  the  constitution,  it  certainly  was  a  great  advance 
on  the  charter.  It  seems  to  have  lifted  from  the 
shoulders  of  the  people  a  load  which,  however 
slight,  had  been  sufficient  to  hamper  them  in  their 
course  up  to  that  time.  The  original  organization 
of  society  and  government  had  been  exceedingly 
democratic  in  1637  and  1662 ;  and  the  constitu- 
tion of  1818  had  only  brought  it  into  line  with  the 
development  of  democracy,  which  had  passed  be- 
yond the  charter.  Labor  had  never  been  disre- 
garded or  degraded,  but  mechanical  labor  had 
never  been  considered  as  quite  on  a  level  with 
agricultural.  The  diai-y  of  John  Cotton  Smith, 
the  last  Federalist  governor,  is  sprinkled  with 
notes  of  his  labor  among  his  men  in  the  harvest 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  857 

field  and  in  the  other  departments  of  farm  work  ; 
and  he  was  but  a  representative  of  his  class.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  are  such  cases  as  that  of 
Roger  Sherman,  who  came  into  New  Milford  a 
shoemaker,  and  lived  to  be  a  senator  of  the  United 
States  ;  but  they  were  as  uncommon  in  Connecti- 
cut before  1818  as  that  of  Smith  was  common. 
The  mechanic  was  ■primd  facie  vulgar,  and  his 
ability  was  shown  by  getting  out  of  his  class 
into  law  or  into  agriculture,  not  by  increasing  his 
wealth  in  it.  There  were  mechanics,  and  good 
ones,  in  Connecticut  before  1818  ;  but  the  State 
only  began  to  be  a  distinctly  mechanical  common- 
wealth when  the  constitution  of  1818  had  lifted 
all  men  into  equality,  and  the  mechanic  was  for 
the  first  time  on  an  equality  with  the  Congrega- 
tional farm-owner. 

Even  under  colonial  conditions  the  mechanical 
genius  of  Connecticut  had  begun  to  develop  the 
manufacture  of  the  easier  forms  of  hardware  ;  and 
with  this  development  came  the  first  appearance 
of  the  peddler  with  his  wagon.  About  1770  the 
manufacture  of  tinware  was  begun  in  Berlin, 
eleven  miles  south  of  Hartford.  This  was  the  be- 
ginning of  the  industry  with  which  the  name  of 
Connecticut  was  to  be  so  closely  associated,  —  the 
production  of  "  Yankee  notions."  The  peddlers 
carried  the  manufactures  of  this  and  neighborincj 
towns  over  the  country  in  wagons,  exchanging 
them  for  local  products  and  reaping  a  double  profit 


358  CONNECTICUT. 

on  the  exchange.  Transactions  of  a  darker  dye 
than  any  legitimate  profit  were  also  laid  to  the 
account  of  these  peddlers:  their  malignant  in- 
genuity was  debited  with  the  introduction  of 
wooden  nutmegs,  bass-wood  hams,  oak-leaf  cigars, 
and  similar  frauds.  Undoubtedly  there  was  much 
fraudulent  work  :  the  loose  conditions  of  such  a 
trade,  when  ignorance  on  one  side  was  always 
tempting  any  latent  dishonesty  on  the  other,  would 
make  some  fraud  inevitable.  But  the  essence  of 
the  accusation  was  in  the  rivalry  of  local  trade,  in 
the  jealousy  of  unsuccessful  competitors,  provoked 
by  the  sudden  success  of  Connecticut  workmen  in 
their  new  field.  They  had  found  a  sphere  in 
which  the  niggardliness  of  nature  could  not  check 
them.  The  lack  of  coal  as  fuel  might  weigh 
heavily  against  the  value  of  their  iron-mines,  but 
the  ingenuity  of  the  workmen  was  a  possession 
which  could  not  be  taken  from  the  commonwealth. 
From  the  little  beginning  at  Berlin  has  grown  up 
a  great  system  of  towns,  in  the  district  along  the 
Naugatuck  and  Connecticut  rivers,  devoted  to  the 
manufacture  of  hardware,  of  brass  goods,  of  any- 
thing and  everything  in  which  the  accuracy,  skill, 
and  ingenuity  of  the  workman  can  make  up  for 
the  distance  of  the  place  of  manufacture  from  the 
source  of  the  raw  material  and  from  the  places  of 
sale.  Here  are  Ansonia,  Waterbury,  New  Britain, 
Meriden,  and  a  bewildering  maze  of  other  towns, 
all  of  which  have  been  developed  by  water-power 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  359 

and  human  ingenuity ;  older  places  like  Hartford, 
New  Haven,  and  Norwich  have  felt  the  reflex  in- 
fluence and  joined  in  the  race  ;  and  quite  new 
places,  like  Bridgeport,  have  sprung  to  life  and 
activity  under  the  impulse  derived  from  the  first 
tin  pail  made  at  Berlin.  Before  that  time,  every 
enterprising  man  kept  his  eyes  keenly  on  the  be- 
nevolence of  Nature,  and  looked  to  the  use  of  some- 
thing produced  in  the  commonwealth  which  he 
could  improve  for  sale  ;  since  that  time,  such  men, 
no  longer  heeding  local  resources,  have  scoured 
the  world  for  materials,  have  brought  them  to 
Connecticut  and  passed  them  through  the  crucible 
of  Connecticut  ingenuity,  and  have  found  in  the 
results  a  mine  richer  than  the  Spaniard's  longings 
could  compass. 

The  clock  manufacture  in  Connecticut,  with  its 
adjuncts  or  derivatives,  is  an  excellent  example  of 
the  manner  in  which  the  mechanics  of  the  com- 
monwealth have  made  their  ingenuity  of  public 
service.  Wooden  clocks,  of  the  old  high  pattern, 
were  made  at  Waterbury  as  long  ago  as  1700. 
About  1793  Eli  Terry  went  thence  to  Plymouth 
and  began  a  manufacture  of  his  own  by  water- 
power,  his  first  patent  of  improvements  being  taken 
out  in  1797.  About  1814  he  introduced  the  new 
and  far  more  convenient  pattern  of  smaller  mantel 
clocks.  Chauncey  Jerome  began  the  manufacture 
of  brass  clocks  about  1821,  and  with  this  the 
modern  field  of  Connecticut  ingenuity  was  opened. 


360  CONNECTICUT. 

The  parts  of  the  clocks  were  soon  made  inter- 
changeable, so  that  one  workman  could  give  his 
entire  time  to  the  production  of  each  part,  while 
increased  production  made  the  whole  clock  far 
cheaper  ;  and  the  application  of  machinery  to  the 
production  of  the  parts  soon  made  prices  still 
cheaper.  In  1840  the  value  of  the  clocks  pro- 
duced in  the  State,  almost  entirely  for  home  con- 
sumption, was  over  a  million  dollars,  and  the 
manufacturers  were  ready  to  reach  out  after  foreign 
trade.  So  low  had  they  driven  cost  and  prices 
that  their  first  exports  paid  more  than  2000% 
profit.  The  story  goes  that  the  first  cargo  of  Con- 
necticut clocks  for  the  English  market  was  invoiced 
so  low,  in  spite  of  this  abnormal  profit,  that  the 
custom-house  ofiicers,  suspecting  undervaluation, 
enforced  their  right  to  take  the  cargo  at  its  invoice 
value.  This  suited  the  exporters  so  well  that  they 
immediately  shipped  another  cargo,  which  met  the 
same  fate.  A  third  cargo  staggered  the  custom 
house,  and  it  went  out  of  the  clock  business. 
Since  that  time  the  world  has  been  supplied  with 
machine-made  Connecticut  clocks  and  watches. 

The  little  streams  which  fall  into  Long  Island 
Sound  are  easily  dammed,  have  abundance  of  wa- 
ter, and  have  been  utilized  from  the  first  as  a 
source  of  power.  When  Dr.  Howe,  of  New  York, 
invented  his  machine  for  making  pins  at  one  oper- 
ation, his  most  urgent  need  was  for  competent 
mechanics.      These  could   be   found  only  among 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  361 

the  Connecticut  men  who  had  been  working  on 
brass  clocks,  and  the  manufacture  of  pins  was  es- 
tablished at  Derby  and  Birmingham  in  1835  and 
1838.  The  making  of  pins  brought  with  it  the 
establishment  of  brass-mills  for  the  production  of 
the  necessary  wire  ;  and  the  surplus  of  this  pro- 
duction added  the  manufacture  of  about  every- 
thing into  which  brass  plate  and  wire  could  be 
stamped  or  twisted.  Thus  a  constantly  widening 
field  has  been  offered  for  the  peculiar  talents  of 
the  Connecticut  workman.  "  He  is  usually  a 
Yankee  of  Yankees  by  birth,  and  of  a  tempera- 
ment thoughtful  to  dreaminess.  His  natural  bent 
is  strongly  towards  mechanical  pursuits,  and  he 
finds  his  way  very  early  in  life  into  the  work- 
shop. Impatient  of  the  fetters  which  trade  soci- 
eties forge  for  less  independent  minds,  he  delights 
to  make  his  own  bargain  with  his  employer,  and, 
whatever  be  the  work  on  which  he  is  engaged, 
bends  the  whole  force  of  an  acute  but  narrow  in- 
telligence to  scheming  means  for  accomplishing  it 
easily.  Unlike  the  English  mechanic,  whom  a 
different  education  and  different  circumstances 
have  taught  to  believe  his  own  interest  ill  served 
by  facilitating  the  operations  of  the  workshop,  the 
Connecticut  man  is  profoundly  convinced  to  the 
contrary.  He  cherishes  a  fixed  idea  of  creating  a 
monopoly  in  some  branch  of  manufacture  by  es- 
tablishing an  overwhelming  superiority  over  the 
methods  of  production  already  existing   in  that 


362  CONNECTICUT. 

branch.  To  '  get  up '  a  machine,  or  a  series  of 
machines,  for  this  purpose,  is  his  one  aim  and  am- 
bition. If  he  succeeds,  supported  by  patents  and 
the  ready  aid  which  capital  gives  to  promising 
novelties  in  the  States,  he  may  revolutionize  an 
industry,  forcing  opponents  who  produce  in  the 
old  way  altogether  out  of  the  market,  while  bene- 
fiting the  consumer  and  making  his  own  fortune 
at  the  same  time.  The  workshops  of  Massachu- 
setts, Rhode  Island,  and  especially  of  Connecticut, 
are  full  of  such  men.  Usually  tall,  thin,  reflec- 
tive, and  taciturn,  but  clever,  and,  above  all 
things,  free,  —  the  equals,  although  mechanics,  of 
the  capitalist  upon  whose  ready  alliance  they  can 
count,  — they  are  an  element  of  incalculable  value 
to  American  industry.  Their  method  of  attack- 
ing manufacturing  problems  is  one  which,  intelli- 
gently handled,  must  command  markets  by  si- 
multaneously improving  qualities  and  cheapening 
prices.  We  ourselves  certainly  aim,  as  they  do, 
at  the  specialization  of  manufacture,  but  one 
scarcely  treads  upon  the  threshold  of  clock-land 
before  feeling  how  much  more  universally  the  sys- 
tem is  being  applied  in  the  States  than  here  [in 
England].  Tools  and  processes  which  we  are 
inclined  to  consider  as  exceptionally  clever  are  the 
commonplaces  of  American  shops  ;  and  the  de- 
termination to  do  nothing  by  hand  which  can  be 
done  by  a  machine  is  a  marked  characteristic  of 
the  workmen  there,  while  it  scarcely  exists  among 
operatives  here." 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  363 

This  description,  by  a  competent  English  ob- 
server (Mr.  Daniel  Pigeon),  has  been  extracted 
and  inserted  in  spite  of  the  unjust  characteriza- 
tion of  the  workman's  intelligence  as  "  narrow," 
for  the  sake  of  the  clearer  view  which  is  always 
gained  by  an  observation  from  the  outside.  The 
characteristics  which  he  notes  are  not  at  all  con- 
fined to  the  clock  and  brass  industries :  wherever 
human  ingenuity,  in  the  peculiar  form  it  has  taken 
in  Connecticut,  can  enable  a  manufactory  to  com- 
pete successfully  with  its  more  favorably  situated 
rivals,  the  attempt  has  been  made  to  localize  it 
in  the  commonwealth.  When  Eli  Whitney,  of 
New  Haven,  had  been  robbed  of  the  profits  of  his 
wonderfully  simple  invention  of  the  cotton-gin,  he 
turned  his  attention  to  the  manufacture  of  arms. 
The  United  States  government  wanted  a  supply  of 
firearms,  and  Whitney,  without  any  facilities  for 
making  them,  took  the  contract  for  the  work,  rely- 
ing justly  on  Connecticut  ingenuity  to  find  a  way. 
Everything  had  to  be  created ;  but  the  means  on 
which  he  relied  and  with  which  he  succeeded  were 
the  persistent  substitution  of  machinery  for  hand- 
work, the  encouragement  of  invention,  and  the 
use  of  equivalent  parts,  so  that  each  part  could 
be  made  by  the  thousand  and  yet  any  part  would 
fit  the  others.  The  completion  of  the  contract  es- 
tablished a  successful  arms-factory  at  Wliitney- 
ville,  near  New  Haven.  Here,  in  1848,  Samuel 
Colt  began  the  manufacture  of  his  revolver,  which 


364  CONNECTICUT. 

he  had  invented  while  a  boy  of  fifteen,  during  a 
voyage  to  India,  and  had  patented  in  1836.  In 
1850  he  removed  to  Hartford,  and  the  Sharp's 
Rifle  Company  followed  him  the  next  year.  The 
Winchester  Arms  Company  of  New  Haven  has 
since  taken  another  variety  of  work.  There  have 
been  times  when  contending  armies  have  both 
been  armed  from  the  little  State  of  Connecticut ; 
and  yet  the  State  itself  has  furnished  hardly  a 
particle  of  the  raw  material,  its  entire  contribu- 
tion being  the  ingenuity  of  its  workmen  and  the 
mechanical  genius  of  its  inventors. 

It  would  be  unjust  to  leave  it  to  be  inferred 
that  this  mechanical  ingenuity  has  been  narrow 
in  its  scope  or  narrowing  in  its  results.  Putting 
aside  such  cases  as  those  of  Whitney  and  Good- 
year, in  which  invention  has  been  applied  to  the 
broadest  and  most  useful  fields,  the  later  records 
of  the  commonwealth  have  been  crowded  with  the 
names  of  men  who  have  owed  their  rise  to  genius 
of  this  type,  and  have  done  no  discredit  to  any 
employment  to  which  the  commonwealth  has  seen 
fit  to  call  them.  To  specify  would  necessarily  be 
to  do  injustice  to  those  whose  names  would  have 
to  be  omitted.  One  must  hold  to  the  general 
statement  that  many  of  the  best  public  servants 
of  the  commonwealth,  since  its  great  industrial 
revolution  began,  have  owed  their  rise  to  their 
success  in  some  branch  of  mechanical  industiy. 
Connecticut  manufacturers  have  regularly  risen 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  365 

from  the  ranks,  and  when  they  have  been  trans- 
ferred from  private  to  public  business,  they  have 
held  their  own  well  in  the  inevitable  comparison 
with  their  professional  rivals. 

The  character  of  the  Connecticut  workman  has 
led  to  a  peculiar  kindness  of  relations  between 
himself  and  his  employer.  It  would  be  impossi- 
ble to  go  into  particulars  of  the  thoughtfulness  of 
Connecticut  employers  for  their  employees,  of  the 
well -understood  equality  of  relations  between 
them,  and  of  the  consideration  of  employees  for 
the  necessities  of  employers,  without  seeming  to 
advertise  those  few  establishments  that  must  be 
selected  for  illustration.  Any  one  who  will  take 
the  trouble  to  examine  for  himself  into  the  rela- 
tions between  the  real  Connecticut  workman  and 
his  employers  need  not  go  far  into  the  State  be- 
fore being  satisfied.  The  institutions  which 
Hooker  founded  still  retain  their  influence  over 
the  descendants  of  the  first  settlers. 

And  yet  one  cannot  but  feel  some  fear  for  the 
future  of  the  Connecticut  mechanic,  and,  with 
him,  of  Connecticut  industries.  The  tendency  of 
the  organization  of  industry  is  so  strongly  toward 
forms  of  combination  of  labor  which  cannot  but 
be  a  drawback  upon  complete  individual  initiative, 
that  it  must  be  reflected  in  Connecticut.  Indeed, 
it  has  already  begun  to  affect  the  relations  between 
employer  and  employed.  The  report  of  the  Con- 
necticut  Labor   Bureau   for  1885   shows,  in  its 


366  CONNECTICUT. 

accounts  of  the  grievances  alleged  by  employees, 
and  of  the  remedies  which  they  suggest,  a  spirit 
which  has  not  been  common  in  the  State  hereto- 
fore. Whether  it  is  justified  or  not,  is  not  the 
question  :  the  main  fact  is  that  it  exists,  and  that 
there  is  danger  that  it  may  result  in  forms  of  labor 
which  would  be  fatal  to  individualized  production. 
Other  commonwealths,  more  favored  by  nature, 
may  continue  to  produce  with  success  under  sys- 
tems which  substitute  combined  for  individualized 
labor.  But  Connecticut  has  no  such  advantage ; 
her  long  lead  in  the  industrial  race  has  come 
purely  from  the  high  individual  ability  of  her 
workmen,  and  any  tendency  which  operates  against 
this  element  of  prosperity  cannot  but  aifect  the 
welfare  of  the  commonwealth. 

The  reputation  of  the  Connecticut  workman 
has  been  so  long  established  that  one  is  apt  to 
think  of  the  commonwealth  of  the  last  century  as 
only  a  smaller  edition  of  the  Connecticut  of  the 
present.  It  has  seemed  advisable,  therefore,  to 
lay  stress  upon  the  fact  that  the  Connecticut  of 
the  present  is  the  creation  of  this  century  ;  that 
Connecticut  was  almost  as  much  an  agricultural 
commonwealth  in  1810  as  she  is  now  a  mechani- 
cal and  manufacturing  commonwealth.  How  far 
the  forward  step  which  democracy  in  the  State 
took  in  1818  was  a  cause  or  only  a  symptom  of 
the  revolution  which  followed  so  rapidly,  is  more 
than  any  one  can  say ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  resist 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  367 

the  conviction  that  the  relation  between  them  was 
an  intimate  one. 

Apart  from  the  peculiarly  State  features  of  the 
industrial  development,  at  least  one  feature  of  it 
has  had  a  national  and  international  influence,  as 
Mr.  E.  E.  Hale  hjis  pointed  out.  The  Connecticut 
Joint  Stock  Act  of  1837,  framed  by  Mr.  Theodore 
Hinsdale,  a  manufacturer  of  the  commonwealth, 
introduced  the  corporation  in  the  form  under 
which  we  now  generally  know  it.  Its  principle 
was  copied  by  almost  every  State  of  the  Union, 
and  by  the  English  Limited  Liability  Act  of  1855  ; 
and  the  effects  of  its  simple  principle  upon  the  in- 
dustrial development  of  the  whole  modern  world 
are  quite  beyond  calculation.  All  that  can  be 
done  here  is  to  notice  the  wide  influence  of  a  single 
Connecticut  manufacturer's  idea,  and  to  call  at- 
tention to  this  as  another  instance  of  the  close 
connection  of  democracy  with  modern  industrial 
development. 

The  census  of  1880  showed  that  the  population 
of  Connecticut  was  622,700,  of  which  492,708  was 
native  and  129,992  foreign.  From  the  eighth 
State  in  order  of  population  in  1790,  it  had  fallen 
to  twenty-eighth  in  1880.  Of  this  population, 
112,915  were  at  work  in  the  4,488  factories  of  the 
State,  the  capital  of  these  being  $120,480,275, 
the  annual  wages  $43,501,518 ;  value  of  mate- 
rials $102,183,341,  and  that  of  the  finished  pro- 
duct $185,697,211.    The  manufacture  of  firearms, 


368  CONNECTICUT. 

clocks,  India-rubber  goods,  wagons  and  carriages, 
hardware,  britannia  and  table  ware,  cutlery,  cot- 
ton and  woolen  goods,  machinery,  and  sewing- 
machines  were  the  leading  industries  ;  but  patent 
industries,  in  which  Connecticut  leads  all  the 
States,  are  the  most  numerous  sources  of  her  pros- 
perity. The  assessed  valuation  of  the  State  was 
$228,791,267  for  real  estate,  and  1^98,386,118  for 
personal  property,  these  of  course  representing 
a  much  larger  real  value.  With  1.24%  of  the 
population  of  the  United  States,  its  people  held 
3.24%  of  the  national  registered  bond-debt.  There 
were  in  1885  eighty-four  savings-banks,  with 
256,097  depositors,  and  deposits  amounting  to 
$92,481,525 ;  ten  stock  fire-insurance  companies, 
with  assets  of  $24,040,193 ;  seventeen  mutual 
fire-insurance  companies,  with  assets  of  $1,195,297  ; 
and  nine  life-insurance  companies,  with  gross  re- 
ceipts of  $110,839,326  and  liabilities  of  $99,321,- 
018.  There  were  twenty-two  railroads,  with  a 
length  of  974  miles,  and  a  total  value  of  about 
$90,000,000.  Their  general  management  has  been 
excellent:  in  1884  they  carried  16,957,574  pas' 
sengers,  of  whom  but  one  was  fatally  injured. 

Agriculture  still  occupied  about  45,000  persons, 
with  a  capital  of  about  $125,000,000  invested  in 
30,598  farms,  containing  1,642,188  acres  of  im- 
proved and  811,353  acres  of  unimproved  land. 
The  average  size  of  the  farms  had  decreased  from 
106  acres  in  1850,  99  acres  in  1860,  and  93  acres 
in  1870,  to  80  acres  in  1880. 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  369 

The  commonwealth  government  still  remains  a 
comparatively  simple  one.  The  annual  revenues 
and  expenditures  are  about  a  million  and  a  half. 
About  one  third  of  this  is  drawn  from  the  towns 
by  taxation,  another  third  from  taxes  on  railroad 
companies,  and  the  bulk  of  the  remainder  from 
taxes  on  mutual  fire-insurance  companies  and  sav- 
ings-banks. The  total  debt,  December  1,  1885, 
was  $4,271,000 ;  and  the  permanent  school  fund, 
$2,028,124.  The  principal  items  of  expenditure, 
outside  of  interest  on  the  debt,  were  about  $200,000 
each  for  judicial  expenses,  common  schools,  and 
humane  institutions,  and  about  $100,000  each  for 
legislative  expenses  and  the  militia. 

Before  closing  this  brief  summary  of  the  ma- 
terial progress  of  the  commonwealth  during  the 
century,  a  still  briefer  space  may  fairly  be  given 
to  its  political  history  during  the  same  period.  At 
the  beginning  of  the  century,  as  has  been  said  al- 
ready, Connecticut  was  a  steadily  Federalist  State, 
and  it  continued  so  until  the  election  of  1818,  or 
as  long  as  the  Federal  party  existed.  In  presiden- 
tial elections  it  has  been  the  steadiest  in  its  gen- 
eral opposition  to  the  national  Democratic  party. 
It  has  cast  its  electoral  vote  for  Federal,  Whig,  or 
Kepublican  candidates  at  every  election  except  five : 
1820,  1836,  1852, 1876,  and  1884.  But  the  popu- 
lar majorities  have  always  been  very  slight ;  and 
the  feeling  of  the  minority  party  that  it  had  "  a 
fighting  chance  "  in  the  State  has  been  kept  up  by 

24 


370  CONNECTICUT. 

its  share  of  success  in  the  frequently  recurring 
State  elections.  The  pluralities  have  usually  been 
exceedingly  small.  In  the  election  of  1884  the 
Democratic  vote  was  67,182  and  the  Republican 
65,898,  so  that  the  Democratic  plurality,  which  de- 
cided the  State's  electoral  vote,  was  but  1,284,  and 
there  was  a  scattering  vote  besides  of  4,179,  or 
over  thrice  the  deciding  plurality. 

The  completeness  of  town  supremacy  over 
local  concerns  gave  rise  to  two  incidents  in  the 
political  history  of  the  State,  which  those  who 
treat  of  it  would  willingly  pass  over  in  silence,  if 
that  were  possible.  At  the  very  outset  of  the  anti- 
slavery  struggle  in  1831  the  free  negroes  of  the 
United  States  determined  to  establish  a  college 
for  their  young  men,  with  a  mechanical  depart- 
ment. New  Haven  was  fixed  upon  as  the  location, 
partly  by  reason  of  its  academic  atmosphere,  and 
partly  by  reason  of  the  State's  advantages  for 
mechanical  education.  The  announcement  raised 
a  storm  of  opposition  in  New  Haven.  The  city 
officers  and  voters,  in  public  meeting,  denounced 
the  project,  and  directed  every  means  to  be  taken 
to  defeat  it.  Such  action  was  at  once  fatal  to  the 
proposed  college,  and  it  came  to  nothing.  Early 
in  1833,  Prudence  Crandall,  a  young  Quaker  girl 
of  Windham  county,  wrote  to  Garrison  that  she 
proposed  to  turn  her  girls'  school  at  Canterbury 
into  a  school  for  colored  children.  The  change 
was  carried  out  during  the  year,  and  raised  a  more 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  371 

angry  local  storm  than  that  which  had  been  met 
in  New  Haven.  A  town  meeting  declared  the 
school  a  nuisance  ;  the  pupils  were  insulted  on  the 
streets ;  the  vagrant  act  was  invoked  against 
them  without  success  ;  and  at  last  the  leaders  of 
the  opposition  went  to  the  general  assembly,  and 
obtained  the  passage  of  an  act  forbidding  the  in- 
troduction into  the  State  of  negroes  from  another 
State,  for  purposes  of  instruction,  without  the 
written  consent  of  the  selectmen  of  the  town. 
Under  the  act  Miss  Crandall  was  arrested,  and  by 
the  advice  of  her  friends  went  to  jail  for  a  night. 
Trial  after  trial  failed  to  convict  her  ;  and  "  boy- 
cotting," as  it  is  now  called,  was  brought  into  play 
in  its  most  aggravated  forms.  Even  her  church 
took  part,  and  excluded  her  from  attendance  with 
her  pupils.  Finally,  all  other  means  having 
failed,  her  house  was  broken  open  at  midnight  by 
a  mob,  the  inmates  were  turned  out  of  doors,  and 
the  house  and  its  contents  were  ruined.  Miss 
Crandall  then  gave  up  her  enterprise. 

One  would  not  care  to  be  retained  for  the  de- 
fense in  the  consideration  of  the  Crandall  episode  ; 
he  can  only  wonder  that  Connecticut  men  could 
have  been  guilty  of  the  persecutions  which  were 
inflicted  upon  a  girl  whose  pictured  countenance 
is  almost  a  sufficient  plea  for  her.  But  there  are 
some  points  which  should  be  brought  to  the  reader's 
attention  as  essential  to  a  just  judgment.  The 
commonwealth  of  Connecticut  was  a  most  unfor- 


372  CONNECTICUT. 

tunate  place  for  such  an  experiment,  simply  be- 
cause of  its  peculiar  local  constitution.  On  the 
one  hand,  it  was  a  great  responsibility  upon  a  little 
Windham  county  town  to  assume  the  burden  of  an 
odium  which  far  larger  places  would  not  have 
ventured  to  take  up  at  the  time.  Towns  in  other 
States  might  shirk  responsibility  by  pleading  that 
such  an  establishment  was  the  work  of  a  superior 
power  ;  in  a  Connecticut  town  it  must  be  taken 
as  the  act  and  deed  of  the  town  itself.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  universal  feeling  in  the  State,  that 
a  town  should  have  the  amplest  liberty  of  control 
in  its  local  affairs,  made  it  easy  for  the  town's  con- 
trolling influence  to  get  from  the  general  assembly 
the  act  recognizing  its  selectmen's  right  to  decide 
on  this  question,  —  an  act  whose  form  was  so  closely 
in  accord  with  the  general  tenor  of  the  Connecti- 
cut system  that  legislators  must  have  felt  it  dif- 
ficult to  find  objections  to  it,  even  if  they  disliked 
its  new  principle.  Popular  passion  had  thus  a 
strong  impelling  force  and  a  temptingly  clear 
field  before  it,  and  the  opportunity  thus  afforded 
may  do  something  to  explain  the  whole  affair.  At 
least,  the  second  consideration  should  do  something 
to  exonerate  the  people  of  the  commonwealth  at 
large. 

With  the  exception  of  these  unpleasant  features, 
the  political  history  of  the  commonwealth  has 
been  uneventful,  and  the  only  friction  yet  notice- 
able is  in  some  points  in  which  the  old  forms  of 


INDUSTRIAL  DEVELOPMENT.  373 

local  government  have  seemed  to  become  too  nar- 
row for  the  commonwealth's  growth.  Most  of  the 
dissatisfaction  has  come  from  the  constitution  of 
the  general  assembly.  The  representation  of  the 
political  units  of  the  State  in  it  has  always  been 
somewhat  peculiar,  owing  to  the  survival  of  the 
original  elements.  The  lower  house  has  never 
been  considered  a  popular  body :  it  is  the  histori- 
cal representative  of  the  towns,  with  all  their 
original  feeling  of  town  equality.  A  majority  of 
the  lower  house  need  not  represent  anything  ap- 
proaching a  popular  majority.  The  senate  was 
intended  to  represent  the  popular  majority,  but 
the  twenty-four  districts  from  which  its  members 
are  selected  have  offered  too  tempting  a  prize  for 
gerrymandering  to  be  resisted.  In  other  States,  it 
is  the  apportionment  of  the  lower  house  which  is 
usually  subjected  to  this  process  ;  in  Connecticut, 
it  is  the  senate.  The  party  which  finds  itself  in 
a  majority  on  the  popular  vote,  and  yet  in  a  mi- 
nority in  the  lower  house,  is  apt  to  charge  injustice 
there  also.  And  yet  the  historical  student,  how- 
ever much  he  may  regret  unequal  apportionment 
in  the  senate,  cannot  but  regret  any  attempt  to 
disturb  the  ancient  apportionment  in  the  lower 
house.  It  is  one  of  the  few  remnants  of  the  origi- 
nal constitution  of  the  commonwealth,  and  speaks 
too  plainly  the  history  of  Connecticut  to  be  will' 
ingly  abandoned. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

CONNECTICUT  IN  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  UNION. 

Now  that  the  heat  and  passion  of  the  war  for 
the  Union  have  so  far  died  away,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  the  hasty  rush  into  hostilities  was 
largely  due  to  the  prevalent  belief  in  the  seceding 
States  that  the  North  and  West  would  not  fight. 
The  belief  rested  on  different  grounds  as  to  the 
two  sections.  The  West  would  not  fight  because 
it  was  in  her  interest  to  secure  peaceable  use  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  thus  mutual  interest  was  to  guard 
the  South  from  an  enemy  for  whom  it  had  consider- 
able respect.  The  manufacturing  regions  of  the 
North  would  not  fight  because  they  dared  not ; 
and  if  they  should  attempt  to  fight,  the  South 
would  ask  no  better  or  safer  amusement  than  a 
conflict  with  them.  History  should  have  taught 
all  men  more  wisdom  :  the  Flemish  artisan  had 
long  ago  shown  the  world  how  his  craft  could  fight 
upon  occasion,  and  the  Northern  mechanics  only 
repeated  and  emphasized  the  lesson.  The  aversion 
to  war  as  an  abstract  principle  was  strongest 
among  such  as  the  typical  Connecticut  workman. 
He  could  see  no  use  in  it ;  it  was  not  in  the  line 


IN  THE  WAR  FOR   THE   UNION.  375 

of  his  training  or  ambitions  ;  it  interfered  seriously 
with  all  that  he  longed  to  do  in  the  world.  All 
this  really  made  him  a  more  dangerous  enemy, 
for  when  he  was  forced  into  warlike  occupation 
he  went  to  work  at  it  with  a  peculiar  determina- 
tion to  finish  the  matter  and  get  rid  of  it  as  soon 
as  possible.  But  the  average  Southerner's  opinion 
was  undoubtedly  voiced  by  Governor  Hammond  of 
South  Carolina,  when  he  said  that  the  "  manual 
laborers  and  operatives  of  the  North  "  were  "  es- 
sentially slaves,"  "  the  mudsills  of  society,"  the 
difference  being  that  "  our  slaves  are  hired  for 
life  and  are  well  compensated  ;  yours  are  hired 
by  the  day  and  not  cared  for."  Above  others,  he 
"would  probably  have  been  amused  by  the  notion 
of  an  actual  regiment  of  Connecticut  mechanics 
and  tin-peddlers  as  a  possible  element  in  the  deci- 
sion of  the  great  question. 

It  is  a  fair  instance  of  the  commonwealth's  in- 
difference to  military  glory  that  her  militia  system 
was  so  completely  out  of  gear  in  1861  that  she 
was  unable  to  provide  even  the  single  regiment  of 
militia  assigned  to  her  in  the  first  call  of  President 
Lincoln.  Up  to  the  last  moment  her  people  were 
intensely  busy  with  the  machinery  and  mechani- 
cal industries  which  had  given  them  so  large  a 
place  in  the  material  development  of  the  country. 

A  remarkable  feature  of  the  war  was  the  group 
of  "  war  governors  "  who  directed  the  energies  of 
their  States  during  the  struggle,  and  stand  out 


376  CONNECTICUT. 

above  the  mass  of  those  who  have  occupied  the 
office.  To  this  group  Connecticut  made  a  notable 
contribution  in  the  person  of  her  war  governor, 
William  A.  Buckingham,  of  Norwich,  one  of  the 
class  of  manufacturers  and  business  men  who  have 
so  often  served  the  commonwealth.  January  17, 
1861,  he  issued  his  proclamation  to  the  militia  of 
the  State,  warning  them  that  their  services  might 
be  needed  at  any  moment,  and  urging  them  to  be 
"  ready  to  render  such  service  as  any  exigency 
might  demand."  The  ranks  of  the  militia  were 
not  filled  as  they  should  have  been  ;  but  the  pru- 
dent governor,  on  his  personal  responsibility,  or- 
dered the  quai'termaster  to  buy  equipments  for 
6,000  men.  They  did  good  service  just  when  they 
were  most  needed. 

In  the  spring  of  1861,  Governor  Buckingham 
•was  reelected  by  a  vote  of  43,012  to  41,003  for 
James  C.  Loomis.  April  16,  he  called  for  a  regi- 
ment of  volunteers,  as  there  was  not  even  a  regi- 
ment of  organized  militia  to  fill  President  Lincoln's 
call  on  the  commonwealth.  The  step  was  un- 
authorized by  law,  but  the  governor  relied  on  the 
general  assembly  to  validate  it  at  the  coming  ses- 
sion. In  this  he  represented  the  people  exactly, 
for  they  had  caught  fire  at  the  capture  of  Sumter. 
More  than  five  times  the  State's  quota  volunteered, 
' —  fifty-four  companies  instead  of  ten.  But  the 
curious  feature  of  the  case,  as  illustrating  the 
survival  underneath  of  the  primitive  constitution 


JN  TEE  WAR  FOR  THE   UNION.  377 

of  the  commonwealth,  is  the  way  in  which  the 
work  was  done.  The  commonwealth  was  met  by 
an  emergency  utterly  unprovided  for  by  law  ;  the 
legislature  was  not  in  session,  and  the  governor 
was  the  only  available  representative  of  common- 
wealth power.  All  this  apparent  chaos  did  not 
disturb  the  people  in  the  least.  They  fell  back  at 
once  upon  the  resources  of  their  town  system,  as 
they  would  have  done  in  1637.  Town  meetings 
all  over  the  State  met  and  exercised  their  re- 
served powers  to  tide  over  the  crisis.  Money  was 
voted  to  support  the  families  of  volunteers,  and  to 
insure  a  prompt  response  to  the  governor's  call. 
By  tens  and  fifteens  and  twenty-fives,  the  little 
towns  poured  in  their  contributions  of  men ;  the 
cities  and  large  towns  sent  larger  numbers,  and 
added  larger  contributions  of  money  ;  and  soon 
the  governor  was  justified  in  going  to  Washing- 
ton and  inducing  the  administration  to  accept 
three  regiments  from  Connecticut  instead  of  one. 

When  the  legislature  met  in  May,  it  ratified  tlie 
governor's  acts,  and  appropriated  $2,000,000  for 
military  expenses.  Extra  pay,  to  the  amount  of 
$30  a  year,  was  voted  to  each  enlisted  man  during 
the  war,  besides  support  for  families  of  volunteers, 
six  dollars  per  month  for  the  wife  and  two  dollars 
per  month  for  each  child  under  fourteen.  The 
support  was  to  continue  until  the  expiration  of 
the  term  of  enlistment,  even  though  the  soldier 
should  die  before  that  tima     Beyond  such  general 


878  CONNECTICUT. 

acts  as  these,  it  may  be  said  with  considerable 
accuracy  that  the  commonwealth  organization  did 
little,  and  had  little  to  do,  for  the  conduct  of  the 
war :  the  war  was  managed,  as  far  as  Connecticut 
was  concerned,  by  the  towns,  just  as  in  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution.  Many  of  them  are  still  stagger- 
ing under  the  load  of  debt  which  bears  witness  to 
their  unselfish  devotion  to  the  cause. 

All  through  the  war,  the  votes  of  the  two  great 
parties  remained  about  as  close  as  in  1861.  The 
minority  contained  a  "  peace  party,"  and  its  pro- 
ceedings, raising  of  peace  flags,  etc.,  were  a  con- 
stant exasperation  to  the  people.  The  legislature 
met  it  in  a  fashion  quite  characteristic  of  Connec- 
ticut. It  voted  that  any  such  flag  was  a  "  nui- 
sance," to  be  abated  by  any  constable  or  justice  of 
the  peace  of  a  town,  or  by  the  sheriff  of  the 
county.  Even  here,  however,  unofficial  represen- 
tatives of  the  towns  were  usually  first  to  abate 
the  nuisance,  as  the  town  committees  of  safety 
had  done  nearly  a  century  before. 

The  first  Connecticut  regiment  did  not  reach 
Washington  until  May  13.  To  compensate  for  the 
delay,  it  came  perfectly  prepared,  even  to  50,000 
rounds  of  ammunition,  and  rations  and  forage  for 
twenty  days.  The  second  and  third  regiments 
followed  within  a  day  or  two,  all  in  the  same  con- 
dition of  complete  preparation.  The  three  took 
part  in  the  battle  of  Bull  Run.  They  led  the  ad- 
vance, opened  the  battle,  were  not  demoralized. 


IN  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   UNION.  379 

and  covered  the  retreat,  —  a  pretty  fair  record  for 
"  mudsills  "  in  their  first  battle.  To  illustrate  the 
business  habits  which  the  Connecticut  men  carried 
into  war-making,  it  is  worth  while  to  note  that, 
■when  they  marched  back  into  their  quarters  near 
Washington,  they  not  only  brought  their  own 
camp  equipage  in  perfect  condition,  but  the  camp 
equipage  of  three  other  regiments,  and  two  pieces 
of  artillery,  which  they  had  found  abandoned  and 
had  thoughtfully  taken  possession  of  on  the  way. 
The  three  regiments  were  three-months'  men,  but 
their  members  reenlisted  almost  to  a  man ;  and 
the  high  character  of  these  first  Connecticut  rep- 
resentatives in  the  field  may  be  estimated  from 
the  fact  that  more  than  five  hundred  of  them  be- 
came commissioned  officers  during  the  war. 

Call  after  call  was  made  for  troops,  and  the  old 
commonwealth  kept  her  quota  more  than  full. 
She  had  in  the  service  at  various  times  twenty- 
eight  regiments  of  infantry,  two  regiments  and 
three  batteries  of  artillery,  and  one  regiment  and 
a  squadron  of  cavalry,  numbering  54,882  volun- 
teers of  all  terms  of  service,  or,  if  the  terms  are 
all  reduced  to  a  three  -  years'  average,  48,181 
three-years'  men,  6,698  more  than  her  quota.  For 
a  State  with  but  about  80,000  voters,  and  about 
50,000  able-bodied  men  on  her  militia  rolls  in 
1861,  the  percentage  of  volunteers  is  very  high ; 
indeed,  not  more  than  one  or  two  States  excelled 
it.     There  were  97  officers  and  1,094  men  killed 


880  CONNECTICUT. 

in  action,  48  officers  and  663  men  who  died  from 
wounds,  63  officers  and  3,246  men  who  died  from 
disease,  and  21  officers  and  389  men  who  were  re- 
ported missing. 

The  men  who  filled  the  Connecticut  rolls  were 
to  an  unusual  degree  typical  of  the  best  elements 
of  the  commonwealth's  history.  Many  of  the 
names  show  that  their  possessors  were  of  foreign 
blood  or  birth,  but  the  mass  of  them  are  those 
which  have  been  familiar  to  the  State  since  its  co- 
lonial foundation.  It  was  peculiarly  appropriate 
that  almost  the  first  victim  should  have  been  Theo- 
dore Winthrop  of  New  Haven,  for  he  drew  his 
blood  from  Connecticut's  first  governor,  John 
Winthrop.  To  one  who  has  followed  the  history 
of  the  State  with  any  close  attention,  the  rolls  of 
her  regiments  are  productive  of  a  curious  sensa- 
tion. He  finds  the  same  names  which  he  has  seen 
again  and  again  in  the  town  histories ;  he  can  al- 
most tell  from  the  recurring  names  on  the  rolls  the 
town  from  which  each  company  was  enlisted  ;  and 
it  sometimes  seems  as  if  the  dead  soldiers  of  the 
Pequot  or  King  Philip's  war  had  sprung  to  life 
again  to  answer  the  cry  of  a  new  country.  And 
yet  the  alien  names,  whose  owners  made  up  so 
large  a  part  of  the  State's  military  history,  are  as 
fair  a  reason  for  satisfaction,  for  they  are  a  stand- 
ing proof  that  Connecticut's  catholic  spirit  of  hos- 
pitality has  been  met  by  a  loyal  adoption  of  the 
institutions  and  spirit  of  the  old  commonwealth. 


IN   THE  WAR  FOR  THE   UNION.  381 

Any  attempt  to  enumerate  the  contributions 
of  Connecticut  to  the  military  and  naval  service 
of  the  United  States  must  be  embarrassing.  It 
would  seem  unfair  to  omit  the  names,  like  those 
of  Grant  and  Sherman,  of  men  who  drew  their 
blood  from  Connecticut,  and  their  powers  for  good 
from  the  institutions  of  her  founders  ;  and  yet  such 
a  list  would  stretch  out  far  beyond  the  space 
which  could  possibly  be  given  to  it.  But  even 
though  the  attention  is  confined  to  the  common- 
wealth's more  direct  contributions,  the  list  is  long 
enough  to  be  embarrassing.  To  the  navy,  Con- 
necticut contributed  its  secretary,  Gideon  Welles, 
rear  admirals  Andrew  H.  Foote  of  New  Haven, 
and  F.  H.  Gregory  of  Norwalk,  and  commodores 
John  Rogers  and  C.  R.  P.  Rogers  of  New  London, 
and  R.  B.  Hitchcock.  In  the  army,  Winthrop  has 
been  mentioned  already.  Among  the  Connecti- 
cut major-generals  were  Alfred  H,  Terry  of  New 
Haven,  Darius  N.  Couch  of  Norwalk,  John  Sedg- 
wick of  Cornwall  Hollow,  J.  K.  F.  Mansfield  of 
Middletown,  Jos.  A.  Mower  of  New  London,  J. 
R.  Hawley  of  Hartford,  H.  W.  Birge  of  Norwich, 
and  R.  O.  Tyler  of  Hartford;  and  among  the 
brigadier-generals,  Nathaniel  Lyon  of  Eastford, 
G.  A.  Stedman  of  Hartford,  O.  S.  Ferry  of  Nor- 
walk, Daniel  Tyler  and  Edward  Harland  of  Nor- 
wich, and  A.  von  Steinwehr  of  Wallingford.  So 
large  a  contribution  of  distinguished  officers  is 
doubly  remarkable  as   coming   from   so  small  a 


382  CONNECTICUT. 

State,  and  from  a  State  which  did  not  enter  the 
conflict  out  of  any  diseased  passion  for  military 
glory,  but  simply  out  of  the  national  necessity  of 
the  case.  If  we  should  attempt  to  pass  below  the 
higher  grades  of  officers,  the  list  of  Connecticut 
men  who  fought  their  way  into  command  of  regi- 
ments or  companies,  in  the  service  of  their  own  or 
other  States,  would  be  almost  endless.  Common- 
wealth and  towns  have  marked  their  gratitude  to 
their  representatives  in  the  war.  They  have 
shown  that  a  commonwealth's  aversion  to  war  is 
entirely  compatible  with  the  most  unyielding  stub- 
bornness when  it  is  forced  upon  her,  and  that  the 
eminence  of  her  sons  in  the  arts  of  peace  can 
never  again  be  taken  as  a  safe  indication  that  they 
are  easy  victims  for  attack.  It  was  with  no  small 
pride  that  the  people  of  Connecticut  watched  the 
close  of  the  war,  as  one  of  her  children  held  Lee's 
army  in  an  iron  grasp  on  the  James,  while 
another  was  moving  up  irresistibly  from  the  far 
South,  sweeping  up  the  remaining  forces  of  the 
Confederacy  into  a  great  net,  from  which  there 
was  no  escape.  And  the  military  historian  of  the 
commonwealth  may  well  be  permitted  to  close 
this  chapter  for  her  :  — 

"The  first  great  martyrs  of  the  war  —  Ells- 
worth, Winthrop,  Ward,  and  Lyon  —  were  of  Con- 
necticut stock.  A  Connecticut  general,  with  Con- 
necticut regiments,  opened  the  battle  of  Bull  Run 
and   closed  it;  and  a  Connecticut  regiment  was 


IN  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   UNION.  383 

marshaled  in  front  of  the  farm-house  at  Appomat- 
tox when  Lee  surrendered  to  a  soldier  of  Connec- 
ticut blood.  A  Connecticut  flag  first  displaced  the 
palmetto  upon  the  soil  of  South  Carolina  ;  a  Con- 
necticut flag  was  first  planted  in  Mississippi ;  a 
Connecticut  flag  was  first  unfurled  before  New 
Orleans.  Upon  the  reclaimed  walls  of  Pulaski, 
Donelson,  Macon,  Jackson,  St.  Philip,  Morgan, 
Wagner,  Sumter,  Fisher,  our  State  left  its  inefface- 
able mark.  The  sons  of  Connecticut  followed  the 
illustrious  grandson  of  Connecticut  as  he  swung 
his  army  with  amazing  momentum  from  the  fast- 
nesses of  Tennessee  to  the  Confederacy's  vital 
centre.  At  Antietam,  Gettysburg,  and  in  all  the 
fierce  campaigns  of  Virginia,  our  soldiers  won 
crimson  glories  ;  and  at  Port  Hudson  they  were 
the  very  first  and  readiest.  .  .  .  On  the  banks  jof 
every  river  of  the  South,  and  in  the  battle-smoke 
of  every  contested  ridge  and  mountain-peak,  the 
sons  of  Connecticut  have  stood  and  patiently 
struggled.  In  every  ransomed  State  we  have  a 
holy  acre  on  which  the  storm  has  left  its  emerald 
waves,  —  three  thousand  indistinguishable  hillocks 
on  lonely  lake  and  stream,  in  field  and  tangled 
thicket." 

If  the  writer  of  the  foregoing  paragraph  had 
repeated  the  stately  dirge  of  the  general  court  of 
two  hundred  years  ago,  it  would  have  been  but  a 
just  connection  between  the  spirit  of  the  fathers 
and  of  their  children ;  "  The  bitter  cold,  the  tarled 


384  CONNECTICUT. 

swamp,  the  tedious  march,  the  strong  fort,  the 
numerous  and  stubborn  enemy  they  contended 
•with,  for  their  God,  king,  and  country,  be  their 
trophies  over  death.  .  .  .  Our  mourners,  over  all 
the  colony,  witness  for  our  men  that  they  were 
not  unfaithful  in  that  day." 


CHAPTER  XX. 

RECENT   DEVELOPMENT. 

In"  the  twenty  years  that  close  the  nineteenth 
century  the  most  striking  features  in  the  develop- 
ment of  Connecticut  have  shown  themselves  in  the 
economic  rather  than  in  the  political  organization. 
Earlier  chapters  have  described  the  rise  of  town 
and  commonwealth  governments ;  they  tell  the 
story  of  the  difficulties  through  which  the  people 
struggled  that  they  might  establish  a  satisfactory 
system  for  the  conduct  of  their  public  affairs.  No 
better  proof  can  be  given  of  the  success  of  their 
efforts  than  the  uneventful  character  of  the  po- 
litical history  of  the  State  through  most  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  Inside  the  framework  of 
government  that  time  had  tested,  citizens  could 
devote  themselves  contentedly  to  their  private 
affairs ;  they  could  take  advantage,  with  freedom 
and  security,  of  the  wonderful  opportunities  of 
economic  progress  that  the  century  has  offered ; 
and  they  have  effected  a  revolution  in  the  economic 
organization  of  the  State.  It  will  be  the  purpose 
of  this  chapter  to  describe  the  economic  changes 
of  the  past  twenty  years,  the  period  in  which  these 
changes  have  been  most  rapid,  and  to  notice  what 


386  CONNECTICUT. 

development  there  has  been  in  the  political  organi- 
zation. 

By  1880  Connecticut  had  already  become  a  dis- 
tinctly industrial  State.  Nearly  one  half  of  the 
workers  of  the  commonwealth  were  engaged  in 
manufacturing  and  mechanical  trades,  and  only 
one  in  five  was  occupied  with  agriculture,  the 
branch  of  production  which  had  once  been  all- 
embracing.  The  number  of  farmers  has  not  varied 
greatly  in  the  last  twenty  years,  and  in  a  sense,  as 
will  be  shown  later,  it  is  wrong  to  speak  of  the 
"  decline  "  of  agriculture  in  the  State.  Relatively, 
however,  to  other  branches  of  production,  agricul- 
ture has  certainly  lost  ground.  Each  of  the  two 
census  decades  has  seen  the  addition,  in  round 
numbers,  of  thirty  thousand  new  wage-earners  to 
manufactures  and  of  twenty  thousand  to  trade  and 
transportation,  so  that  agriculture  is  now  entirely 
overshadowed  by  the  modern  industries  and  counts 
to-day  scarcely  more  than  one  in  ten  of  the  workers 
of  the  State. 

The  growth  of  manufacturing  is  to  be  measured 
not  alone  by  the  increase  in  the  number  of  per- 
sons engaged  in  it.  That  number  includes  at  all 
periods  many  petty  artisans,  who  in  a  sense  are 
manufacturers,  as  they  work  up  raw  material  into 
finished  forms.  These  artisans  perform  services 
highly  valued  in  any  community,  but  they  lack 
the  peculiar  efiiciency  of  modern  labor,  organized 
on  the  capitalist  system,  and  in  their  social  and 


RECENT   DEVELOPAfENT.  387 

political  relations  they  belong  rather  with  the  farm- 
ers than  in  the  most  characteristic  parts  of  mod- 
ern society.  The  growth  in  Connecticut  manufac- 
tures has  come  not  from  the  increase  in  this  class, 
but,  in  the  modern  style,  from  the  increase  in  fac- 
tory laborers,  working  with  machines  and  power 
furnished  by  their  employers.  While  the  number 
of  persons  engaged  in  manufactures  has  risen 
in  twenty  years  from  112,000  to  176,000,  the 
capital  invested  has  grown  from  $120,000,000  to 
$314,000,000 ;  and  the  disproportion  between  the 
ratios  of  growth  implies  that  manufactures  have 
changed  not  only  quantitatively  but  qualitatively 
as  well,  and  that  Connecticut  has  kept  pace  with 
other  industrial  States  in  accepting  the  capitalist 
form  of  organization. 

The  social  and  political  problems  arising  from 
this  new  form  of  organization  are  sufficiently  well 
known  to  all  students  of  modern  conditions,  and 
such  students  scarcely  need  to  be  reminded  of  the 
great  reason  for  the  change,  its  economic  eflSciency. 
The  reason  appears  clearly  in  reviewing  the  in- 
dustries of  Connecticut  at  the  present  time.  The 
seventeen  leading  manufactures  in  the  State,  com- 
prising over  three  fifths  of  the  total  number  of 
persons  engaged  in  manufacture  and  nearly  three 
fifths  in  value  of  the  total  product,  are  all  organized 
on  the  factory  system,  and  include  only  993  out  of 
a  total  of  9128  manufacturing  establishments.  I 
give  the  list,  ranking  the  industries  according  to 


388  CONNECTICUT. 

the  number  of  persons  employed  in  each,  and  itali- 
cizing the  names  of  those  in  which  Connecticut 
takes  first  place  among  all  the  States,  in  respect 
to  the  value  of  the  product:  textiles  (especially 
cotton,  silk,  woolen,  and  worsted),  brass  manufac- 
tures^ foundry  and  machine  shop  products,  hard- 
ware^ corsets^  fur  hats,  plated  and  hrittania  ware, 
ammunition,  cutlery,  clocks,  rubber  goods,  car- 
riages, sewing  machines,  iron  and  steel,  paper  and 
wood  pulp,  needles  and  pins,  electrical  apparatus 
and  supplies. 

In  the  product  of  manufactures,  measured  per 
head  of  population,  Connecticut  has  now  reached 
the  second  place  among  the  States,  having  passed 
Massachusetts  and  standing  next  to  Rhode  Island. 
Still  more  striking,  in  view  of  the  relatively  small 
size  of  the  State,  is  the  fact  that  it  exceeds  every  one 
of  the  other  States  in  nine  (or  eleven  if  the  brass 
manufacture  be  divided  into  its  parts)  out  of 
ninety-nine  industries  specified  in  the  census  of 
1900.  The  commonwealth  has  shown  its  ability 
not  only  to  keep  its  place  at  home,  but  to  extend 
its  business  at  the  expense  of  foreign  rivals,  and 
has  begun  to  export  a  considerable  share  of  its 
products  abroad.  In  some  manufactures,  like 
those  of  clocks  and  fire-arms,  the  foreign  trade  has 
always  been  considerable,  but  the  ability  to  export 
has  shown  itself  in  many  other  industries  in  the 
closing  years  of  the  century,  and  large  factories 
have  sent  one  half  or  more  of  their  output  of 
machines  and  tools  to  foreign  countries. 


RECENT   DEVELOPMENT.  389 

What  reasons  explain  this  superiority  of  Con- 
necticut in  manufacturing  enterprise  ?  The  ques- 
tion is  answered  as  follows  in  a  recent  volume  of 
the  United  States  Census :  "  The  preeminence  of 
the  State  in  manufacturing  is  due  in  part  to  its 
excellent  communication  by  rail  and  water  with  all 
parts  of  the  country  ;  to  its  geographical  location, 
by  which  it  can  handle  a  large  export  trade ;  to  its 
water-power ;  to  its  plentiful  supplies  of  labor  and 
capital,  the  former  gathered  easily  in  the  great 
centres  of  the  East,  and  the  latter  coming  to  it 
not  alone  from  its  profitable  manufactures  but  also 
from  its  large  insurance  and  banking  interests ; 
and  to  its  joint-stock  laws." 

Nothing  is  said  of  the  physical  resources  of  the 
State.  Its  mines  have  fallen  into  obscurity  and 
its  agriculture  produces  only  for  household  con- 
sumption. Connecticut  sends  to  Pennsylvania  for 
its  iron,  to  Montana  for  its  copper,  to  the  South 
for  its  cotton,  to  China  for  its  raw  silk,  and  all 
over  the  world  for  its  wool.  It  imports  even  its 
power  from  abroad,  in  the  form  of  coal ;  the  water 
power  of  the  State  is  small  when  compared  with 
that  of  other  States,  and  plays  an  inconsiderable 
part  in  manufacturing.  Other  factors  cited  in  the 
quotation  are  of  undoubted  importance.  Connec- 
ticut has  its  full  share  of  capital,  and  satisfactory 
rules  under  which  this  may  be  invested,  especially 
now  that'a  general  corporation  law  has  been  passed ; 
and  the  State  is  well  situated  for  the  marketing  of 
its  products. 


390  CONNECTICUT. 

There  remains  the  factor  of  labor.  The  author 
has  said  in  an  earlier  chapter  (page  366),  that  the 
leadership  of  Connecticut  in  manufactures  "has 
come  purely  from  the  high  individual  ability  of 
her  workmen."  The  State,  then,  won  its  place  by 
the  quality  as  much  as  by  the  quantity  of  its  in- 
dustrial laborers.  Are  we  to  understand  that  it 
keeps  its  place  by  the  same  means,  —  has  it  now 
not  only  an  adequate  supply  of  labor  but  a  supply 
of  exceptionally  good  labor  as  well  ? 

Some  indication  of  the  individual  ability  of  a 
people  in  manufactures  is  furnished  by  the  number 
of  inventions  they  bring  forth.  The  inventions  of 
Connecticut  have  been  celebrated  for  generations, 
and  if  we  follow  the  number  produced  in  recent 
times  we  find  that  the  ingenuity  of  the  people  is 
still  prolific.  From  1850  to  1900  Connecticut  has 
always  held  the  first  place  among  the  States  for 
the  number  of  patents  issued  in  comparison  with 
the  total  population  ;  in  recent  census  years  when 
the  statistics  have  been  compiled,  the  people  of  the 
commonwealth  have  taken  out  ordinarily  about 
one  patent  to  every  thousand  inhabitants.  In  the 
last  decade,  however,  there  has  been  a  perceptible 
falling  off  in  the  rate,  and  consideration  will  show 
this  to  be  natural  and  probably  permanent.  The 
very  object  of  many  inventions  is  a  machine  that 
will  accomplish  automatically  what  before  has 
been  entrusted  to  human  skill ;  unceasing'demand 
for  such  machines  comes  from  manufacturers  who 


RECENT   DEVELOPMENT.  391 

want  to  substitute  cheap  and  unskilled  labor  for 
that  which  is  intelligent  and  costly.  So  long  as 
the  demand  for  such  machines  continues  it  is  likely 
to  be  supplied  in  large  part  by  Connecticut  inge- 
nuity and  enterprise;  the  tradition  of  experiment 
and  invention  has  been  established  in  the  State, 
and  will  be  maintained  by  a  select  body  of  mechan- 
ics, who  are  largely  of  native  origin,  descendants 
of  the  original  whittling  Yankees. 

The  demand  ha,s  been  satisfied,  however,  in  many 
industries,  and  in  them  a  cheaper  grade  of  laborers 
has  been  established,  lower  in  intelligence  than 
the  workers  of  fifty  years  ago.  Of  these  laborers 
many  are  foreigners.  In  each  of  the  past  two 
decades  the  foreign-born  population  of  Connecticut 
has  increased  by  over  50,000,  and  amounts  now 
altogether  to  238,000.  Many  of  the  foreign-born 
have  entered  domestic  service,  many  have  gone 
into  some  petty  trade  or  become  common  laborers, 
but  many  others,  just  how  many  it  is  impossible 
to  say,  have  found  employment  in  manufactures. 
In  some  districts  French  Canadians  have  become 
the  predominant  element,  and  few  factories  of  any 
size  lack  English,  Irish,  Germans,  and  Swedes  on 
their  pay-rolls.  European  experts  are  not  im- 
pressed now,  as  once  they  were,  with  the  superior 
quality  of  individual  mill  operatives  in  this  coun- 
try ;  they  find  much  the  same  people  whom  they 
left  on  the  other  side  of  the  water,  and  they  have 
begun  to  doubt  whether  the  eflficiency  of  our  mills 


392  CONNECTICUT. 

is  due  to  any  improvement  in  labor  brought  on  by 
the  conditions  of  life  here. 

Another  cause  must  be  sought  to  explain  the 
efficiency  of  American  manufactures  in  general,  of 
Connecticut  manufactures  in  particular.  It  is 
found  in  the  perfection  of  organization  in  this  coun- 
try and  in  the  State.  No  patents  are  granted  for 
inventions  in  factory  organization,  which  enable 
the  duties  of  manufacture  to  be  distributed  so  that 
every  worker  in  every  department  is  called  upon 
for  all  that  he  is  qualified  to  do,  no  less  and  no 
more.  Inventions  of  this  kind,  however,  effect  as 
real  an  economy  as  those  concerned  with  the  im- 
provement of  technical  processes,  and  play  a  deci- 
sive part  when  the  competition  of  manufacture 
lies  between  great  social  groups  such  as  form  our 
modern  factories.  There  is  significance  in  the  fact 
that  one  of  Connecticut's  leading  manufactures, 
the  pin  industry,  is  just  that  which  Adam  Smith 
selected  long  ago  to  demonstrate  the  advantages  of 
division,  or  organization,  of  labor.  Connecticut 
has  kept  its  place  in  manufacturing  not  by  its  phy- 
sical resources,  not  even  by  a  superior  supply  of 
capital  and  labor,  so  much  as  by  the  shrewdness 
and  energy  of  its  industrial  leaders,  who  have  sur- 
passed their  rivals  in  the  efficient  combination  of 
the  forces  that  are  employed  in  making  and  mar- 
keting goods. 

We  have  carried  down  from  an  earlier  time  the 
idea  of  the  importance  of  the  individual  laborer  in 


RECENT   DEVELOPMENT.  393 

manufactures,  and  we  are  slow  to  recognize  with 
due  appreciation  the  services  of  the  factory  masters. 
Connecticut  owes  a  considerable  number  of  its 
large  manufacturing  establishments  to  the  few 
men,  sometimes  members  of  a  single  family,  who 
have  practically  created  each,  and  maintained  and 
strengthened  it  through  changing  times.  The 
State  may  well  be  proud  of  its  manufacturing  aris- 
tocracy ;  only  by  the  rule  of  the  best  could  its  in- 
dustries have  been  brought  to  their  present  flour- 
ishing condition. 

Further  proof,  if  one  were  needed,  of  the  part 
played  by  leading  men  in  developing  the  industries 
of  the  State,  is  furnished  by  the  history  of  another 
form  of  business  enterprise,  —  that  concerned  with 
life  and  fire  insurance.  In  the  insurance  business 
many  of  the  factors  that  complicate  the  question 
of  success  in  manufacturing  are  eliminated ,  labor, 
among  other  factors,  is  a  negligible  quantity.  The 
Connecticut  insurance  companies  have  had  to  meet 
the  competition  of  companies  enjoying  the  finan- 
cial advantages  of  a  situation  in  the  money-centre 
of  the  country,  and  have  suffered  from  the  hostile 
legislation  of  certain  States,  but  they  still  carry 
on  a  considerable  part  of  the  insurance  business 
of  the  country,  and  stand  second  to  none  in  the 
esteem  of  the  insurance  world.  They  owe  their 
success  to  the  honesty  and  economy  of  their  corpo- 
rate management. 

It  will  not  be  necessary,  for  the  purposes  of  this 


394  CONNECTICUT. 

chapter,  to  describe  at  length  the  changes  that  have 
taken  place  in  other  occupations  allied  in  some 
respects  to  manufactures.  In  trade  and  transpor- 
tation, in  professional  and  in  domestic  and  per- 
sonal services,  there  has  been  an  increase  not  only 
in  the  absolute  numbers  but  also  in  the  proportion 
of  the  population  engaged.  The  transportation 
system  has  been  strengthened  by  the  addition  of 
the  elective  street  railroads,  and,  partly  as  a  result 
of  this  change,  there  has  been  a  development  in 
the  mercantile  organization  similar  to  that  which 
has  taken  place  in  manufacturing,  building  up 
the  large  stores  at  the  expense  of  their  competi- 
tors. 

The  agriculture  of  the  State  cannot  be  dis- 
missed quite  so  summarily.  Even  on  sentimental 
grounds  interest  would  attach  to  a  branch  of  pro- 
duction which  was  for  centuries  the  mainstay  of 
the  commonwealth.  There  are  practical  reasons 
as  well,  however,  inviting  attention  to  the  sub- 
ject. Any  industry  acquires  an  importance  out 
of  proportion  to  the  number  of  persons  engaged 
in  it  when  it  shows  symptoms  of  depression  such 
as  have  appeared  in  Connecticut  agriculture ;  it 
is  the  one  sheep  astray  from  the  fold,  deserving 
more  care  than  the  ninety  and  nine  who  are  safe. 
Even  the  economic  results  of  the  decline  of  any 
industry  represent  a  danger  to  the  community, 
but  the  danger  is  intensified  when  the  results  ap- 
pear in  the  political  organization  as  well.     So  in. 


RECENT  DEVELOPMENT.  395 

Connecticut,  whose  political  constitution  grew  up 
on  the  basis  of  agriculture  and  whose  political  wel- 
fare depends  now  on  the  wholesome  condition  of 
the  rural  towns,  every  fact  is  of  importance  which 
indicates  the  course  and  the  probable  future  of  the 
agricultural  crisis  through  which  the  State  is  pass- 
ing. 

The  Connecticut  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics 
investigated  the  condition  of  693  farms  in  the 
State  in  1888,  and  received  from  the  farmers  who 
conducted  them  reports  showing  that  more  than 
half  of  the  number,  378,  were  worked  at  a  loss. 
The  farmers  included  their  family  expenses,  it  is 
true,  with  the  costs  of  operation  ;  setting  these  ex- 
penses aside,  the  number  of  farms  that  ran  behind 
from  a  purely  business  standpoint  would  be  re- 
duced to  42.  The  fact  remains,  however,  if  we 
can  regard  these  figures  as  typical  of  conditions  in 
the  State  at  large,  that  more  than  half  of  the  Con- 
necticut farmers  at  this  period  found  it  impossible 
to  make  both  ends  meet  by  the  methods  that 
they  were  then  pursuing  and  on  the  standard 
of  living  to  which  they  were  accustomed.  The 
United  States  statistics,  taken  two  years  later, 
were  also  discouraging ;  they  showed  that  the 
number  of  farms,  the  acreage  of  farm  land,  the 
value  of  farm  property,  and  the  value  of  farm 
products  had  all  decreased  in  the  State  in  the 
ten  years  following  1880.  We  can  admire  the 
spirit,    but   we   cannot    fail   to   see    an  unhappy 


396  CONNECTICUT. 

significance,  in  the  motto  displayed  over  Con- 
necticut's agricultural  exhibit  at  the  Columbian 
Exposition  of  1893 :  "  Connecticut's  best  crop 
her  sons  and  daughters." 

The  reasons  for  this  depression  were  not  peculiar 
to  Connecticut,  and  are  not  far  to  seek.  The  im- 
mense advance  in  manufactures  and  trade  had  at- 
tracted to  the  cities  some  of  the  best  elements  of  the 
rural  population.  The  improvements  in  transporta- 
tion freed  the  growing  population  of  the  cities  from 
dependence  on  the  country  immediately  surround- 
ing for  food  supplies,  and  exposed  the  Connecticut 
farmers  to  the  competition  of  producers  favored 
with  far  greater  advantages  of  soil  or  climate.  It 
may  be  doubted  whether  even  at  this  time  the 
farmers  of  the  State,  taken  all  together,  were  ab- 
solutely worse  off  than  they  had  been  in  the  past. 
There  had  been  a  sharp  rise,  it  is  true,  in  the  price 
of  farm  labor,  but  most  of  the  objects  of  consump- 
tion on  the  farm,  especially  manufactured  articles, 
cost  much  less  than  formerly.  Even  those  farmers, 
however,  who  managed  to  maintain  their  former 
money  income,  and  who  consequently  were  able  to 
enjoy  more  comforts  of  life  than  before,  measured 
their  standard  against  that  prevailing  in  the  cities, 
and  regarded  themselves  as  declining  in  prosperity 
because  they  were  being  passed  by  others. 

Adjustment  to  these  conditions  has,  however, 
taken  place  in  the  ten  years  that  closed  the  cen- 
tury.    The  number  of  farms,  the  acreage  of  farm 


RECENT   DEVELOPMENT.  397 

land,  and  tbe  value  of  farm  property  all  increased 
slightly  in  that  period,  while  in  the  value  of  farm 
products  there  has  been  the  striking  growth  from 
$17,000,000  in  1890  to  $28,000,000  in  1900. 
The  Connecticut  farmers,  therefore,  have  solved 
their  problem  ;  they  have  done  it  almost  unaided, 
and  in  the  best  way,  too,  not  by  limiting  their 
expenditures  but  by  increasing  their  income. 
They  have  reached  this  result  by  devoting  them- 
selves to  products  especially  suited  to  their  en- 
vironment, and  by  studying  economy  in  raising  and 
marketing  the  product. 

The  direction  of  the  change  is  indicated  in  a 
sentence  which  I  quote  from  an  address  delivered 
before  the  State  agricultural  convention  in  1898  : 
"  Grass  is  the  only  crop  outside  of  special  lines 
which  can  be  grown  on  our  Eastern  farms  at  a  real 
profit."  Less  than  one  fifth  of  the  farms  of  the 
State  now  report  their  main  income  as  coming  from 
miscellaneous  sources,  while  over  one  quarter  are 
devoted  to  the  raising  of  live  stock,  and  nearly  one 
third  to  dairy  production.  There  has  been  a  de- 
crease in  the  cultivation  of  every  cereal  except  In- 
dian corn,  and  a  large  part  of  the  improved  land 
has  been  turned  back  to  pasture.  Connecticut  is 
now  preeminently  a  dairy  State.  By  the  improve- 
ment in  the  breed  of  stock,  by  the  organization 
of  creameries,  of  which  there  are  now  over  fifty 
in  the  State,  and  by  the  application  of  scientific 
principles  in  dairy  production,  the  farmers  are  in 


398  CONNECTICUT. 

a  position  to  take  full  advantage  of  the  profitable 
market  which  the  large  city  groups  offer  to  them. 

Space  forbids  a  consideration  of  the  special 
branches  of  production  which  have  developed  from 
the  miscellaneous  farming  of  the  past.  The  cul- 
ture of  fruit  for  market  is  largely  a  growth  of  re- 
cent years.  Through  the  influence  of  a  few  leaders, 
fruit  of  unsurpassed  quality,  and  in  rapidly  increas- 
ing quantity,  is  now  grown  in  the  State ;  much 
"  abandoned  "  farm  land  has  been  planted  with 
peaches,  and  now  yields  good  returns.  The  tobacco 
culture  is  a  characteristic  Connecticut  industry, 
especially  in  its  most  recent  development.  The 
tobacco  farmers  have  long  been  accustomed  practi- 
cally to  manufacture  their  soil,  by  adding  to  it  just 
the  chemical  constituents  which  they  wanted  in 
the  crop ;  now  they  manufacture  climate  too,  by 
the  erection  of  cloth  shades  covering  sometimes 
acres  ;  and  experiments  have  proved  that  they  can 
raise  in  this  way  a  leaf  equal  in  all  respects  to  the 
average  imported  Sumatra,  though  the  profits  of 
the  venture  as  a  business  undertaking  are  still  in 
doubt. 

The  economic  development  of  the  past  twenty 
years  has  tended  to  a  constant  increase  of  the  urban 
population,  which  since  1880  has  included  more 
than  half  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  State.  All  but 
12  of  the  168  towns,  it  is  true,  report  some  manu- 
facture carried  on  in  them,  but  the  proportion  of 
manufacturing   done  in  cities  has  increased,  and 


RECENT  DEVELOPMENT.  399 

over  nine  tenths  of  the  manufactured  product  come 
from  the  61  principal  towns.  The  old  form  of 
town  government,  which  continues  to  work  fairly 
well  in  places  that  have  not  changed  greatly  from 
their  original  size  and  character,  has  proved  clumsy 
and  inefficient  in  larger  groups ;  certain  of  its  parts 
remain  everywhere  throughout  the  State,  but  it 
has  constantly  lost  ground  so  far  as  regards  the 
substance  of  power.  The  list  of  cities,  given  in 
a  previous  chapter,  has  doubled  in  the  last  two 
decades,  and  the  increase  in  the  number  of  boroughs 
has  been  almost  as  rapid.  In  the  cities  the  labor 
element  has  gained  a  power  which  is  still  denied 
to  it  in  State  affairs,  and  in  several  cases  in  recent 
years  a  "  labor  mayor  "  has  been  elected. 

If  we  measure  the  importance  of  political  or- 
ganizations by  the  money  standard,  the  municipal 
groups  of  Connecticut  are  more  deserving  of  atten- 
tion than  the  State  government ;  in  a  recent  year 
the  combined  expenditures  of  towns,  boroughs,  and 
cities  was  over  $10,000,000,  more  than  threefold 
the  expenditures  of  the  State  treasury.  The  study 
of  municipal  politics  would  be  unprofitable,  how- 
ever, without  going  into  details,  for  which  there  is 
no  space  here,  and  the  remainder  of  this  chapter 
must  be  reserved  for  the  consideration,  necessarily 
very  brief,  of  State  affairs. 

The  chief  interest  centres  in  the  strains  devel- 
oped in  the  State  constitution  by  the  industrial  and 
urban  growth  of  the  commonwealth.     The  consti- 


400  CONNECTICUT. 

tution,  it  will  be  remembered,  entrusted  very  ex- 
tensive powers  to  a  legislature  in  which  the  towns, 
as  such,  enjoyed  peculiar  influence.  The  constitu- 
tion did  not  provide  for  a  recognition  in  the  field 
of  politics  of  such  extensive  economic  and  social 
changes  as  have  occurred,  and  recent  years  have 
been  marked  by  attempts  to  secure  its  revision. 

In  two  important  points,  the  mode  of  electing  a 
governor  and  the  composition  of  the  State  Senate, 
revision  has  been  effected.  The  two  great  politi- 
cal parties  of  the  State  have  shown  nearly  equal 
strength  at  the  polls,  and  the  slight  diversion  of 
votes  effected  by  a  third  party,  the  Prohibitionists, 
has  on  four  occasions  since  1880  prevented  any 
candidate  from  receiving  the  absolute  majority  re- 
quired by  the  constitution  ;  the  Democratic  candi- 
date might  receive  a  popular  plurality  of  several 
thousand,  but  the  right  of  election  would  go  to  the 
General  Assembly,  and  there  his  rival  would  be 
chosen.  In  1890  the  popular  vote  was  very  close, 
but  on  the  face  of  the  returns  the  Democratic 
candidate,  Luzon  B.  Morris,  had  a  majority  over 
all  of  26.  There  was  a  question,  however,  about 
some  ballots  which  local  election  officials  had  re- 
jected, but  which  would,  if  counted,  increase  the 
total  vote  so  as  to  leave  no  candidate  with  a  ma- 
jority. The  lower  house  of  the  legislature,  which 
was  as  usual  Republican,  asserted  the  right  of  the 
General  Assembly  to  examine  and  correct  the  vote 
as  it  came  to  them  from  the  canvassing  board  of 


RECENT  DEVELOPMENT.  401 

the  State  ;  the  Senate,  then  Democratic,  denied 
this  right,  and  over  this  question  there  was  a  dead- 
lock which  lasted  throughout  the  session,  and 
stopped  legislative  business  entirely.  The  Demo- 
cratic candidate  for  comptroller  was  conceded  a 
majority  and  took  office,  but  the  other  candidates 
were  left  hanging  in  the  air,  and  for  lack  of  "  duly 
qualified "  successors  the  Republican  incumbents 
continued  in  office  from  the  previous  administra- 
tion. The  bitterness  arising  from  this  conflict  did 
not  blind  people  to  the  injustice,  or  at  least  the  in- 
expediency, of  the  sj^stem  which  made  it  possible. 
To  this  grievance  another  was  added.  The  con- 
stitutional provisions  touching  the  State  Senate 
made  it  impossible  to  pay  regard  to  population  in 
its  apportionment,  and  had  led  to  gross  inequalities 
in  the  upper  house,  where  alone  representation  by 
population  was  possible.  In  1900  one  district  had 
tenfold  the  population  of  another.  Popular  sen- 
timent against  these  features  of  the  constitution 
grew  so  strong  that  the  dominant  party  was  forced 
to  action,  and,  in  1892,  took  the  first  steps  neces- 
sary for  their  revision  ;  encouraged  by  Republican 
gains  they  retraced  their  steps  in  1894,  but  the 
"lost  amendments"  were  only  deferred,  and  were 
finally  passed  and  accepted  by  the  people  in  1901. 
The  chief  State  officials  are  now  elected  by  a  plu- 
rality vote  of  the  people,  and  the  Senate  is  to  be 
reapportioned  in  districts  more  nearly  equal  in 
population. 


402  CONNECTICUT. 

There  remain  to  be  considered  questions  still 
unsettled,  of  which  the  most  important  is  the  com- 
position of  the  House  of  Representatives.  The 
constitution  of  1818  fixed  representation  on  the 
existing  basis,  with  provisions  entirely  inadequate 
to  meet  the  changes  in  the  distribution  of  popu- 
lation which  have  since  taken  place.  Towns  of  a 
few  hundred  inhabitants  have  as  many  representa- 
tives as  cities  approaching  or  exceeding  a  hundred 
thousand ;  even  among  the  small  towns  there  is 
no  consistency  in  the  apportionment  of  representa- 
tives. New  Haven,  with  a  population  of  108,027, 
has  still  but  two  representatives  ;  Union,  with  428, 
has  two;  Hamden,  with  4,626,  has  but  one.  It 
seems  hardly  worth  while  to  quote  the  statistical 
comparisons  further  ;  the  most  vigorous  imagina- 
tion is  not  likely  to  exceed  the  facts  in  picturing 
the  present  condition. 

In  the  last  General  Assembly  the  farmers  num- 
bered 89  out  of  a  total  of  255,  and  exceeded  the 
members  of  any  other  vocation.  The  custom  of 
reelection  has  grown  more  and  more  rare  in  the 
course  of  time,  and  rotation  has  taken  its  place  ; 
scarcely  one  representative  in  twenty  is  elected  to 
the  succeeding  Assembly.  The  great  majority 
of  representatives  come  from  the  country  districts, 
without  previous  experience  in  legislation,  and  un- 
trained to  the  scientific  treatment  of  the  complex 
legal  and  fiscal  questions  which  form  a  large  part 
of  State  legislation.     Ignorance  rather  than  cor- 


RECENT   DEVELOPMENT.  403 

ruption  is  the  serious  charge  to  be  brought  against 
the  rural  representatives.  Indirect  bribery,  paying 
a  man  "  for  his  time  "  when  he  voted,  was  formerly 
common  in  the  towns ;  it  has  been  checked  to  some 
extent  by  the  passage  of  a  secret  ballot  law,  and, 
with  more  efficiency  probably,  by  the  action  of  the 
better  elements  in  the  towns.  Election  expenses 
are  still  unduly  large,  it  is  said,  and  legislative 
corruption  is  constantly  hinted  at,  but  it  would  be 
hard  to  prove  that  rural  voters  and  legislators  are 
worse  than  their  fellows  in  the  cities. 

Critics  of  the  existing  system  of  representation 
hold  it  responsible  for  the  lack  of  laws  to  regulate 
the  lobby  and  to  punish  corrupt  practices  ;  they 
charge  against  it  also  selfishness  and  extravagance 
in  the  conduct  of  the  State's  finances.  The  tax 
on  towns  was  suspended  in  1891,  and  has  not 
since  been  resumed ;  and  the  public  revenues  come 
now  almost  entirely  from  taxes  on  corporations. 
Some  of  the  abundant  revenue  has  been  applied 
to  the  reduction  of  the  debt,  but  other  parts  have 
been  expended  on  objects  of  doubtful  utility,  espe- 
cially in  the  multiplication  of  offices,  and  the  sum 
total  of  expenditures  has  grown  rapidly.  None 
will  question  the  need  of  better  roads  in  Con- 
necticut, or  the  propriety  of  the  State  sharing  the 
burden  of  their  construction  ;  it  seems  significant, 
however,  that  in  1895,  when  the  State  first  con- 
tributed to  this  object,  it  paid  but  one  third  of  the 
expense,  in  1897  it  paid  half,  and  in  1899  it  was 


404  CONNECTICUT. 

charged  with  two  thirds  or  three  fourths,  while 
the  total  appropriation  for  the  assistance  of  the 
towns  increased  at  each  session. 

Proposals  for  a  change  in  the  basis  of  represen- 
tation had  been  made  before  1850,  and  repeated 
from  time  to  time,  but  the  discontent  culminated 
at  the  end  of  the  century.  The  advocates  of  re- 
form despaired  of  reaching  their  end  by  securing 
an  amendment  of  the  constitution  in  the  regular 
form,  which  prescribes  a  majority  vote  in  the  lower 
house  of  one  legislature,  a  two  thirds  vote  of  both 
houses  in  the  next,  and  finally  a  ratification  by  the 
people.  They  demanded  that  the  revision  should 
be  effected  by  a  convention,  and  though  to  the 
lawyers  this  seemed  "  disorderly,"  as  the  organic 
law  specified  other  means,  the  General  Assembly 
consented  at  last  to  take  the  will  of  the  people 
on  the  subject,  and  by  over  20,000  majority  the 
convention  was  voted. 

While  the  popular  vote  was  so  strongly  in  favor 
of  the  convention,  the  returns  show  that  over  three 
fourths  of  the  towns  voted  against  it,  and  as  the  body 
was  composed  of  one  delegate  from  each  town 
it  was  certain  to  be  very  critical,  if  not  actually 
hostile,  toward  any  scheme  of  revision.  Over  sixty 
different  plans  to  change  the  system  of  represen- 
tation were  brought  forward,  and  it  is  noteworthy 
that  of  these  all  but  one,  which  never  received 
serious  consideration,  accepted  the  town  idea,  and 
left  the  control  of  the  House  of  Representatives 


RECENT  DEVELOPMENT.  405 

with  the  towns  of  less  than  5000  inhabitants. 
After  discussion  lasting  over  four  months  a  plan 
was  finally  accepted  which  assured  to  each  town 
one  representative,  gave  one  additional  to  towns 
havincf  over  2000  inhabitants,  and  added  one  more 
for  each  50,000  above  50,000.  This  plan  would 
have  taken  30  members  from  small  towns,  and 
added  29  to  the  larger  places,  diminishing  the  num- 
bers of  the  House  by  1.  It  contemplated  also  an 
increase  in  the  Senate.  Beside  this  mild  reform 
in  representation  the  convention  proposed  further 
changes  in  the  constitution,  among  others  prohibit- 
ing the  appointment  of  members  of  the  legislature 
to  other  public  office  during  the  term  for  which 
they  were  elected,  and  giving  the  governor  power 
to  veto  parts  of  aj  propriation  bills. 

The  plan  of  representation  proposed  by  the  con- 
vention was  naturally  opposed  at  the  polls  by  the 
people  of  the  smaller  towns,  and  it  failed  to  satisfy 
the  inhabitants  of  the  larger  towns  and  the  cities. 
Interest  flagged  when  the  outcome  of  the  conven- 
tion was  known,  and  the  popular  vote  on  tlie  pro- 
posed revisions  was  "  remarkable  alike  for  the 
significance  of  its  emphatic  disapproval  and  the 
insignificance  of  its  total  volume.  Practically  5 
per  cent,  of  the  registered  voters  favored  the  new 
constitution,  10  per  cent,  disapproved  it,  and  85 
per  cent,  did  not  vote  either  way."  The  student 
of  Connecticut  politics  from  whom  these  words 
are  quoted  finds,  however,  in  the  past  history  of 


406  CONNECTICUT. 

the  State,  reason  to  believe  that  the  question  will 
not  be  allowed  to  remain  long  unsettled,  and  looks 
to  the  legislature  to  make  some  reasonable  change 
which  will  decide  it.  Thus  much  is  certain,  that 
in  the  immediate  future  no  change  will  be  made 
which  will  destroy  the  peculiar  feature  of  the 
Connecticut  constitution,  its  principle  of  town 
representation. 


APPENDIX. 


THE   CONSTITUTION  OF  1639. 

(Abbreviations  only  are  modernized.) 

Forasmuch  as  it  hath  pleased  the  AUmighty  God  by 
the  wise  disposition  of  his  diuyne  providence  so  to  Or- 
der and  dispose  of  things  that  we  the  Inhabitants  and 
Residents  of  Windsor,  Harteford  and  Wethersfield  are 
now  cohabiting  and  dwelling  in  and  vppon  the  River  of 
Conectecotte  and  the  Lands  thereunto  adioyneing  ;  And 
well  knowing  where  a  people  are  gathered  togather  the 
word  of  God  requires  that  to  mayntayne  the  peace  and 
vnion  of  such  a  people  there  should  be  an  orderly  and 
decent  Gouerment  established  according  to  God,  to  or- 
der and  dispose  of  the  affayres  of  the  people  at  all  sea- 
sons as  occation  shall  require  ;  doe  therefore  assotiate 
and  conioyne  our  selues  to  be  as  one  Publike  State  or 
Commonwelth ;  and  doe,  for  our  selues  and  our  Suc- 
cessors and  such  as  shall  be  adioyned  to  vs  att  any  tyme 
hereafter,  enter  into  Combination  and  Confederation 
togather,  to  mayntayne  and  presearue  the  liberty  and 
purity  of  the  gospell  of  our  Lord  Jesus  which  we  now 
professe,  as  also  the  disciplyne  of  the  Churches,  which  ac- 
cording to  the  truth  of  the  said  gospell  is  now  practised 


408  CONNECTICUT. 

amongst  vs  ;  As  also  in  our  Ciuell  Affaires  to  be  guided 
and  gouerned  according  to  such  Lawes,  Rules,  Orders 
and  decrees  as  shall  be  made,  ordered  &  decreed,  as  fol- 
loweth  :  — 

1.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced  and  decreed,  that  there 
shall  be  yerely  two  generall  Assemblies  or  Courts,  the 
first  on  the  second  thursday  in  Aprill,  the  other  the  sec- 
ond thursday  in  September,  following  ;  the  first  shall  be 
called  the  Courte  of  Election,  wherein  shall  be  yerely 
Chosen  from  tyme  to  tyme  soe  many  Magestrats  and 
other  publike  Officers  as  shall  be  found  requisitte ; 
Whereof  one  to  be  chosen  Gouernour  for  the  yeare  en- 
sueing  and  vntill  another  be  chosen,  and  noe  other  Mag- 
estrate  to  be  chosen  for  more  than  one  yeare ;  provided 
alwayes  there  be  sixe  chosen  besids  the  Gouernour ; 
which  being  chosen  and  sworn  according  to  an  Oath  re- 
corded for  that  purpose  shall  haue  power  to  administer 
justice  according  to  the  Lawes  here  established,  and  for 
want  thereof  according  to  the  rule  of  the  word  of  God ; 
which  choise  shall  be  made  by  all  that  are  admitted  free- 
men and  haue  taken  the  Oath  of  Fidellity,  and  doe  co- 
habitte  within  this  Jurisdiction,  (hauing  beene  admitted 
Inhabitants  by  the  major  part  of  the  Towne  wherein 
they  line)  ^  or  the  mayor  parte  of  such  as  shall  be  theu 
present. 

2.  It  is  Ordered,  sen  tensed  and  decreed,  that  the 
Election  of  the  aforesaid  Magestrats  shall  be  on  this 
manner :  euery  person  present  and  quallified  for  choyse 
shall  bring  in  (to  the  persons  deputed  to  receaue  them) 
one  single  paper  with  the  name  of  him'  written  in  yt 
whom  he  desires  to  haue  Gouernour,  and  he  that  hath 

*  Inserted  at  a  later  period. 


APPENDIX.  409 

the  greatest  number  of  papers  shall  be  Gouernour  for 
that  yeare.  And  the  rest  of  the  Magestrats  or  publike 
Officers  to  be  chosen  in  this  manner :  The  Secretary 
for  the  tyme  being  shall  first  read  the  names  of  all  that 
are  to  be  put  to  choise  and  then  shall  seuerally  nominate 
them  distinctly,  and  euery  one  that  would  haue  the  per* 
son  nominated  to  be  chosen  shall  bring  in  one  single 
paper  written  vppon,  and  he  that  would  not  haue  him 
chosen  shall  bring  in  a  blanke  ;  and  euery  one  that  hath 
more  written  papers  than  blanks  shall  be  a  Magestrat 
for  that  yeare  ;  which  papers  shall  be  receaued  and  told 
by  one  or  more  that  shall  be  then  chosen  by  the  court 
and  sworne  to  be  faythfull  therein ;  but  in  case  there 
should  not  be  sixe  chosen  as  aforesaid,  besids  the  Gou- 
ernor,  out  of  those  which  are  nominated,  then  he  or  they 
which  haue  the  most  written  papers  shall  be  a  Mage- 
strate  or  Magestrats  for  the  ensueing  yeare,  to  make  vp 
she  foresaid  number. 

3.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced  and  decreed,  that  the  Sec- 
retary shall  not  nominate  any  person,  nor  shall  any  per- 
son be  chosen  newly  into  the  Magestracy  which  was  not 
propownded  in  some  Generall  Courte  before,  to  be  nom- 
inated the  next  Election ;  and  to  that  end  yt  shall  be 
lawfull  for  ech  of  the  Townes  aforesaid  by  their  depu- 
tyes  to  nominate  any  two  whom  they  conceaue  fitte  to 
be  putte  to  Election  ;  and  the  Courte  may  ad  so  many 
more  as  they  iudge  requisitt. 

4.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced  and  decreed  that  noe 
person  be  chosen  Gouernor  aboue  once  in  two  yeares, 
and  that  the  Gouernor  be  alwayes  a  member  of  some  ap- 
proved congregation,  and  formerly  of  the  Magestracy 
within  this  Jurisdiction  ;  and  all  the  Magestrats  Free* 


410  CONNECTICUT. 

men  of  this  Commonwelth  :  and  that  no  Magestrate  or 
other  publike  officer  shall  execute  any  parte  of  his  or 
their  Office  before  they  are  seuerally  sworne,  which 
shall  be  done  in  the  face  of  the  Courte  if  they  be  pres- 
ent, and  in  case  of  absence  by  some  deputed  for  that 
purpose. 

5.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced  and  decreed,  that  to  the 
aforesaid  Courte  of  Election  the  seuerall  Townes  shall 
send  their  deputyes,  and  when  the  Elections  are  ended 
they  may  proceed  in  any  publike  searuice  as  at  other 
Courts.  Also  the  other  Generall  Courte  in  September 
shall  be  for  makeing  of  lawes,  and  any  other  publike  oc- 
cation  which  conserus  the  good  of  the  Commonwelth. 

6.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced  and  decreed,  that  the  Gou- 
ernor  shall,  either  by  himselfe  or  by  the  secretary,  send 
out  summons  to  the  Constables  of  euery  Towne  for  the 
cauleing  of  these  two  standing  Courts,  one  month  at  lest 
before  their  seuerall  tymes  :  And  also  if  the  Gouernor 
and  the  gretest  parte  of  the  Magestrats  see  cause  vppon 
any  spetiall  occation  to  call  a  generall  Courte,  they  may 
giue  order  to  the  secretary  soe  to  doe  within  fowerteene 
dayes  warneing :  and  if  vrgent  necessity  so  require,  vp- 
pon a  shorter  notice,  giueiug  sufficient  grownds  for  yt 
to  the  deputyes  when  they  meete,  or  els  be  questioned 
for  the  same  ;  And  if  the  Gouernor  and  Mayor  parte  of 
Magestrats  shall  ether  neglect  or  refuse  to  call  the  two 
Generall  standing  Courts  or  ether  of  them,  as  also  at 
other  tymes  when  the  occations  of  the  Commonwelth  re- 
quire, the  Freemen  thereof,  or  the  Mayor  parte  of  them, 
shall  petition  to  them  soe  to  doe  :  if  then  yt  be  ether 
denyed  or  neglected  the  said  Freemen  or  the  Mayor 
parte  of  them  shall  haue  power  to  giue  order  to  the 


APPENDIX.  411 

Constables  of  the  seuerall  Townes  to  doe  the  same,  and 
80  may  meete  togather,  and  chuse  to  themselues  a  Mod- 
erator, and  may  proceed  to  do  any  Acte  of  power,  which 
any  other  Generall  Courte  may. 

7.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced  and  decreed  that  after 
there  are  warrants  giuen  out  for  any  of  the  said  Gen- 
erall Courts,  the  Constable  or  Constables  of  ech  Towne 
shall  forthwith  give  notice  distinctly  to  the  inhabitants 
of  the  same,  in  some  Publike  Assembly  or  by  goeing  or 
sending  from  howse  to  bowse,  that  at  a  place  and  tyme 
by  him  or  them  lymited  and  sett,  they  meet  and  assem- 
ble themselues  togather  to  elect  and  chuse  certen  dep- 
utyes  to  be  att  the  Generall  Courte  then  following  to 
agitate  the  afayres  of  the  commonwelth ;  which  said 
Deputyes  shall  be  chosen  by  all  that  are  admitted  In- 
habitants in  the  seuerall  Townes  and  haue  taken  the 
oath  of  fidellity  ;  prouided  that  non  be  chosen  a  Deputy 
for  any  Generall  Courte  which  is  not  a  Freeman  of  this 
Commonwelth. 

The  foresaid  deputyes  shall  be  chosen  in  manner 
following:  euery  person  that  is  present  and  quallified  as 
before  expressed,  shall  bring  the  names  of  such,  written 
in  seuerall  papers,  as  they  desire  to  haue  chosen  for 
that  Imployment,  and  these  3  or  4,  more  or  lesse,  being 
the  number  agreed  on  to  be  chosen  for  that  tyme,  that 
haue  greatest  number  of  papers  written  for  them  shall 
be  deputyes  for  that  Courte  ;  whose  names  shall  be  en- 
dorsed on  the  backe  side  of  the  warrant  and  returned 
into  the  Courte,  with  the  Constable  or  Constables  hand 
vnto  the  same. 

8.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced  and  decreed,  that  Wynd- 
6or,  Haxtford  and  Wethersfield  shall  haue  power,  ech 


412  CONNECTICUT. 

Towne,  to  send  fower  of  their  freemen  as  their  deputyes 
to  euery  General!  Courte  ;  and  whatsoeuer  other  Townes 
shall  be  hereafter  added  to  this  Jurisdiction,  they  shall 
send  so  many  deputyes  as  the  Courte  shall  judge  meete, 
a  resonable  proportion  to  the  number  of  freemen  that 
are  in  the  said  Townes  being  to  be  attended  therein  ; 
which  deputyes  shall  haue  the  power  of  the  whole 
Towne  to  giue  their  voats  and  alowance  to  all  such 
lawes  and  orders  as  may  be  for  the  publike  good,  and 
unto  which  the  said  Townes  are  to  be  bownd. 

9.  It  is  Ordered  and  decreed,  that  the  deputyes  thus 
chosen  shall  haue  power  and  liberty  to  appoynt  a  tyme 
and  a  place  of  meeting  togather  before  any  Generall 
Courte  to  aduise  and  consult  of  all  such  things  as  may 
concerns  the  good  of  the  publike,  as  also  to  examine 
their  owne  Elections,  whether  according  to  the  order, 
and  if  they  or  the  gretest  parte  of  them  find  any  such 
election  to  be  illegall  they  may  seclud  such  for  present 
from  their  meeting,  and  returne  the  same  and  their  re- 
sons  to  the  Courte ;  and  if  yt  proue  true,  the  Courte 
may  fyne  the  party  or  partyes  so  intruding  and  the 
Towne,  if  they  see  cause,  and  giue  out  a  warrant  to 
goe  to  a  newe  election  in  a  legall  way,  ether  in  parte  or 
in  whole.  Also  the  said  deputyes  shall  haue  power  to 
fyne  any  that  shall  be  disorderly  at  their  meetings,  or 
for  not  comming  in  due  tyme  or  place  according  to  ap- 
poyntmeut ;  and  they  may  returne  the  said  fyues  into 
the  Courte  if  yt  be  refused  to  be  paid,  and  the  Tres- 
urer  to  take  notice  of  yt,  and  to  estreete  or  levy  the 
same  as  he  does  other  fynes. 

10.  It  is  Ordered,  sentenced  and  decreed,  that  euery 
Generall  Courte,  except  such  as  through  neglect  of  the 


APPENDIX.  413 

Gouernor  and  the  greatest  parte  of  Magestrats  the  Free- 
men themselves  doe  call,  shall  consist  of  the  Gouernor, 
or  some  one  chosen  to  moderate  the  Court,  and  4  other 
Magestrats  at  lest,  with  the  mayor  parte  of  the  deputyes 
of  the  seuerall  Townes  legally  chosen  ;  and  in  case  the 
Freemen  or  mayor  parte  of  them,  through  neglect  or  re- 
fusall  of  the  Gouernor  and  mayor  parte  of  the  mage- 
strats, shall  call  a  Courte,  yt  shall  consist  of  the  mayor 
parte  of  Freemen  that  are  present  or  their  deputyes, 
with  a  Moderator  chosen  by  them :  In  which  said  Gen- 
erall  Courts  shall  consist  the  supreme  power  of  the 
Commonwelth,  and  they  only  shall  haue  power  to  make 
lawes  or  repeale  them,  to  graunt  leuyes,  to  admitt  of 
Freemen,  dispose  of  lands  vndisposed  of,  to  seuerall 
Townes  or  persons,  and  also  shall  haue  power  to  call 
ether  Courte  or  Magestrate  or  any  other  person  what- 
soeuer  into  question  for  any  misdemeanour,  and  may  for 
just  causes  displace  or  deale  otherwise  according  to  the 
nature  of  the  offence  ;  and  also  may  deale  in  any  other 
matter  that  concerns  the  good  of  this  commonwelth,  ex- 
cepte  election  of  Magestrats,  which  shall  be  done  by  the 
whole  boddy  of  Freemen. 

In  which  Courte  the  Gouernour  or  Moderator  shall 
haue  power  to  order  the  Courte  to  giue  liberty  of  spech, 
and  silence  vnceasonable  and  disorderly  speakeings,  to 
put  all  things  to  voate,  and  in  case  the  voate  be  equall 
to  haue  the  casting  voice.  But  non  of  these  Courts 
shall  be  adiorned  or  dissolued  without  the  consent  of 
the  maior  parte  of  the  Court. 

11.  It  is  ordered,  sentenced  and  decreed,  that  when 
any  Generall  Courte  vppon  the  occations  of  the  Com- 
monwelth haue  agi-eed  vppon  any  summe  or  summes  of 


414  CONNECTICUT. 

mony  to  be  leuyed  vppon  the  seuerall  Townes  within 
this  Jurisdiction,  that  a  Committee  be  chosen  to  sett  out 
and  appoynt  what  shall  be  the  proportion  of  euery 
Towne  to  pay  of  the  said  leuy,  provided  the  Committees 
be  made  vp  of  an  equall  number  out  of  each  Towne. 

14th  January,  1638,  the  11  Orders  abouesaid  are 
voted. 

[Until  1752,  the  legal  year  in  England  began  March 
25  (Lady  Day),  not  January  1.  All  the  days  between 
January  1  and  March  25  of  the  year  which  we  now  call 
1639  were  therefore  then  a  part  of  the  year  1638;  so 
that  the  date  of  the  Constitution  is  given  by  its  own 
terms  as  1638,  instead  of  1639.  The  whole  document 
may  be  found  in  Connecticut  Public  Becords,  I.  20-25.3 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


1.  The  general  histories  of  the  United  States :  Bancroft,  Hii.« 
DRETH,  Brtant  and  Gay,  Schouleb,  McMaster,  Pitkin, 
Holmes,  et  als. 

2.  Palfrey's  History  of  New  England ;  Savage's  Winthrop's 
History  of  New  England ;  Bradford's  New  England  Chronol- 
ogy ;  Hubbard's  General  History  of  New  England ;  Oliver's 
Puritan  Commonwealth,  chapter  ii.  (Episcopalian  view) ;  Back- 
tjs's  History  of  New  England  (Baptist  view) ;  Church's  History 
of  King  Philip's  War;  Drake's  French  and  Indian  War  in  New 
England ;  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Publications,  particularly  Garden- 
er's Relation  of  the  Pequot  Wars,  and  Vincent's  True  Rela- 
tion; Mather's  Magnalia  Christi ;  Bacon's  Genesis  of  the  New 
England  Churches ;  Felt's  Ecclesiastical  History  of  New  Eng- 
land. 

3.  Doyle's  American  Colonies ;  Lodge's  English  Colonies  in 
America ;  Force's  Colonial  Tracts. 

4.  Hutchinson's  History  of  Massachusetts ;  Arnold's  His- 
tory of  Rhode  Island  ;  Bartlett's  Records  of  Rhode  Island ; 
Hall's  History  of  Vermont ;  Brodhead's  History  of  New 
York ;  O'Callaghan's  History  of  New  Netherlands ;  2  O'Cal- 
laghan's  Documentary  History  of  New  York  (Leisler  Adminis- 
tration) ;  Hazard's  Pennsylvania  Archives  ;  Sheafer's  Histori- 
cal Map  of  Pennsylvania ;  Regents'  Report  on  the  Boundaries 
of  the  State  of  New  York  ;  Bowen's  Boundary  Disputes  of  Con- 
necticut ;  Prime's  History  of  Long  Island ;  Thompson's  His- 
tory of  Long  Island  ;  Wood's  First  Settlement  of  Long  Island 
Towns. 

5.  The  general  histories  of  Connecticut :  Trumbull,  Dwight, 
Hollisteb,  aod  Carpentbb  and  Arthur  ;  Atwa.tbb'8  History 


416  CONNECTICUT. 

of  New  Haven ;  Levermore's  Republic  of  New  Haven ;  Lam- 
bert's History  of  New  Haveu  Colony  ;  Colonial  Records  of  Con- 
necti(!ut,  edited  by  J.  H.  Tkumuull  and  C.  J.  Hoadly  ;  Colo- 
nial Records  of  New  Haven,  edited  by  Hoadly  ;  Barber's 
Connecticut  Historical  Collections. 

6.  Connecticut  Historical  Society  Proceedings,  particularly 
Hooker's  Letter  to  Winthrop,  Bulkeley's  People's  Right  to 
Election,  Hoadly's  Public  Seal  of  Connecticut,  The  Hartford 
Church  Controversy,  and  Correspondence  of  Silas  Deane  ;  New 
Haven  Historical  Society  Papers,  particularly  Bacon's  Civil 
Government  in  New  Haven,  Trowbridge's  History  of  the  Long 
Wharf,  Bronson's  Connecticut  Currency,  Whitaker's  Early 
History  of  Southold,  Goodrich's  Invasion  of  New  Haven,  Dex- 
ter's  Memoranda  on  the  Regicides,  Trowbridge's  Ancient 
Houses  in  New  Haven,  Beardsley's  Mohegan  Land  Contro- 
versy, E.  C.  Baldwin's  Branford  Annals,  S.  E.  Baldwin's 
New  York  Boundary  Line,  Bronson's  Early  Government  of 
Connecticut,  and  Dexter's  Early  Relations  between  New  Neth- 
erland  and  New  England ;  Connecticut  Valley  Historical  Society 
Papers,  particularly  the  Review  of  Peters's  History ;  Percival's 
Geology  of  Connecticut.  See  also  the  Introduction  to  Palfrey  ; 
De  Forest's  Indians  of  Connecticut ;  2  Hazard's  State  Papers 
(New  England  Commissioners)  ;  Brodhead's  Government  of 
Sir  Edmund  Andros. 

7.  J.  H.  Trumbull's  Notes  on  the  Constitutions  of  Connecti- 
cut, and  True  Blue  Laws;  Peters's  General  History  of  Connec- 
ticut;  Hinman's  Code  of  1650,  and  Antiquities  of  Connecticut; 
Fowler's  Local  Law  in  Connecticut ;  Bacon's  Contributions  to 
the  Ecclesiastical  History  of  Connecticut ;  Beardsley's  History 
of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  Connecticut ;  Johnston's  Genesis  of 
a  New  England  State  (Connecticut). 

8.  Miner's  History  of  Wyoming ;  H.  M.  Hoyt's  Brief  of  the 
Wyoming  Title,  with  the  very  complete  bibliography  at  page  101, 
the  volume  being  the  fairest  and  best  account  of  the  contro- 
versy that  I  have  found. 

9.  Phelps's  History  of  the  Newgate  of  Connecticut;  Elliot's 
Debates ;  President  Dwight's  Travels  in  New  England  and 
New  York;  Wood's  Administration  of  John  Adams;  Good- 
bich's  Recollections  of  a  Life-Time ;  Dwight's  History  of  the 


APPENDIX.  417 

Hartford  Convention  ;  Adams's  New  England  Federalism 
(Gould's  letter) ;  J.  H.  Trumbull's  Defence  of  Stonington; 
Bushnell's  Historical  Estimate  of  Connecticut  (in  his  Work 
and  Play);  Bishop's  History  of  American  Manufactures;  An 
Historical  and  Industrial  Review  of  Connecticut  (1884);  E.  E. 
Hale's  Brown  Univ.  Address;  Everest's  Poets  of  Connecticut; 
French's  Art  and  Artists  in  Connecticut;  Croffut  and  Mor- 
ris's History  of  Connecticut  during  the  Recent  War. 

10.  Stuart's  Hartford  in  the  Olden  Time ;  Trumbull's  His- 
tory of  Hartford  County  (the  first  volume  has  been  used  most 
largely);  Walker's  250th  Anniversary  of  the  First  Church  of 
Hartford;  Stiles's  History  of  Ancient  Windsor,  and  Supple- 
ment ;  Hall's  History  of  Norwalk  ;  Caulkins's  History  of  New 
London,  and  History  of  Norwich ;  Huntington's  History  of 
Stamford  ;  Mead's  History  of  Greenwich  ;  Gardiner's  Notes  on 
East  Hampton  (N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc.  Pub.,  1869)  ;  Holland's  His- 
tory of  Western  Massachusetts ;  Morris's  Early  History  of 
Springfield,  Mass. ;  Cothren's  History  of  Ancieut  Woodbury ; 
Chapin's  History  of  Glastenbury  ;  Larned's  History  of  Wind- 
ham County  ;  Kilbourne's  Biographical  History  of  Litchfield 
County  ;  Woodruff's  History  of  Litchfield  ;  Bronson's  His- 
tory of  Waterbury  ;  Roy's  History  of  Norfolk  ;  Davis's  History 
of  Wallingford  and  Meriden  ;  Taintor's  Records  of  Colchester  ; 
Phelps's  History  of  Simsbury,  Granby,  and  Canton  ;  Boyd's 
Annals  of  Winchester ;  Andrews's  History  of  New  Britain ; 
Fowler's  History  of  Durham ;  Todd's  History  of  Redding  ; 
Sharpe's  History  of  Seymour;  Orcutt's  History  of  Wolcott, 
and  History  of  Torrington  ;  Dexter's  New  Haven  in  1784,  and 
Town  Names  in  Connecticut. 

11.  Kingsley's  Historical  Discourse,  New  Haven,  1838; 
Bacon's  Historical  Discourses,  New  Haven,  1838;  Woolsey's 
Historical  Discourse,  Yale  College,  1850;  Litchfield  County 
Centennial  Addresses,  1851  ;  Field's  Centennial  Address,  Mid- 
dletown,  1853;  Gilman's  Historical  Address,  Norwich,  1859; 
W.  L.  Kingsley's  Yale  College  :  A  Sketch  of  its  History. 

12.  Allen's  Biographical  Dictionary  ;  Sparks's  Library  of 
American  Biography  ;  Winthrop's  Life  and  Letters  of  Win- 
throp  (senior) ;  Mass.  Hist.  Soc.  Coll.,  ser.  5,  vol.  8  (Winthrop 
Papers) ;  New  York   Hist.   Soc.  Coll.,  ser.  2,  vol.  ii. ;  Moore's 


418  CONNECTICUT, 

Memoir  of  Eaton  ;  Stiles's  History  of  the  Regicides ;  Waeren's 
Three  Judges  ;  Stuart's  Life  of  Jonathan  Trumbull ;  Beards- 
let's  Life  of  William  Samuel  Johnson  ;  Humphreys's  Life  of 
Putnam ;  Cutler's  Life  of  Putnam ;  Wolcott  Memorial ; 
Holmes's  Life  of  President  Stiles  ;  Sprague's  Life  of  President 
Dwight ;  Westcott's  Life  of  John  Fitch ;  Goodwin's  Genejfc- 
logical  Notes  ;  Flanders'  or  Van  Santvoord's  Lives  of  the 
Chief  Justices  (for  Ellsworth) ;  Lossing's  or  Sanderson's  Lives 
of  the  Signers  (for  Sherman,  Huntington,  Williams,  and  Wol- 
cott);  Ward's  Life  of  Percival;  Pierce's  Life  of  Goodyear; 
Howe's  Eminent  Mechanics  ;  Hoppin's  Life  of  A.  H.  Foote ; 
Stowe's  Men  of  Our  Time  (for  W.  A.  Buckingham). 

Note.  As  the  foregoing  list  was  prepared  hy  Prof.  Johnston 
to  indicate  the  authorities  on  which  he  based  his  text  there  is, 
clearly,  no  warrant  for  its  revision.  Attention  may,  however, 
be  drawn  to  the  following  articles  which  have  appeared  since  the 
first  edition  of  this  volume,  and  which  present  views  differing 
from  those  of  Prof.  Johnston  in  important  points:  C.  M.An- 
drews's River  Towns  of  Connecticut,  Baltimore,  1889,  and  Ori- 
gin of  Connecticut  Towns  in  Annals  of  Amer.  Acad.  Pol.  Sci.,  Oct.^ 
1890 ;  H.  L.  Osgood's  Connecticut  as  a  Corporate  Colony,  in  Pol. 
Sci.  Quarterly,  June,  1899 ;  Roger  Welles's  Constitutional  His- 
tory of  Connecticut,  in  Conn.  Magazine,  Feb.  -  March,  1899.  The 
most  important  additions  to  the  material  for  the  history  of  Con- 
necticut are  to  be  found  in  the  publications  of  the  State  and  of 
State,  county,  and  local  societies,  and  in  local  histories,  of  which 
a  number  have  been  published  in  recent  years. 

The  principal  authorities  for  the  supplementary  chapter  are : 
U.  S.  Census ;  Public  Documents  of  Connecticut,  especially  Re- 
ports of  the  Bureau  of  Labor  Statistics  and  of  the  Board  of 
Agriculture;  Gold's  Handbook  of  Connecticut  Agriculture;  arti- 
cles on  the  gubernatorial  controversy  by  Harrison,  Baldwin, 
and  Blake,  in  New  Englander,  April,  1891 ;  Deming's  Town 
Rule  in  Connecticut,  in  Pol.  Sci.  Quarterly,  Sept.,  1889;  M.  B. 
Cart's  Connecticut  Constitution,  1900,  and  Struggle  for  Con- 
stitutional Reform,  in  Yale  Law  Journal,  Jan.,  1901  ;  C.  H. 
Clark's  Connecticut  Convention,  in  Yale  Review,  Aug.,  1902. 

Statistics  in  this  chapter  are  cited  generally  in  round  numbers. 


THE  GOVERNORS  OF  CONNECTICUT. 


These  were  chosen  annually  until  1876,  and  thereafter  for  two 
years.  Until  John  Winthrop's  second  election,  immediate  reelec- 
tion was  forbidden. 


1639-40, 
1640-41, 
1641-42, 
1642-43, 
1643-44, 
1644-45, 
1645-46, 
1646-47, 
1647-48, 
1648-49, 
1649-50, 
1650-51, 
1651 -.52, 
1652-53, 
16.53-.54, 
1654-55, 
1655-56, 
1656-57, 
1657-58, 
1658-59, 
1659-76, 
1676-83, 


John  Haynes. 
Edward  Hopkins. 
John  Haynes. 
George  Wyllys. 
John  Haynes. 
Edward  Hopkins. 
John  Haynes. 
Edward  Hopkins. 
John  Haynes. 
Edward  Hopkins. 
John  Haynes. 
Edward  Hopkins. 
John  Haynes. 
Edward  Hopkins. 
John  Haynes. 
Edward  Hopkins. 
Thomas  Welles. 
John  Webster. 
John  Winthrop. 
Thomas  Welles. 
John  Winthrop. 
William  Leete. 


1683-87,  Robert  Treat, 
1687-89,  (Andros.) 
1689-98,  Robert  Treat. 
1698-1707,  Fitz  John  Winthrop. 
1707-24,  Gurdon  Saltonstall. 
1724-41,  Joseph  Talcott. 
1741-50,  Jonathan  Law. 
1750-54,  Roger  Wolcott. 
1754-66,  Thomas  Fitch. 
1766-69,  William  Pitkin. 
1769-84,  Jonathan  Trumbull. 
1784-86,  Matthew  Griswold. 
1786-96,  Samuel  Huntington. 
1796-98,  Oliver  Wolcott. 
1798-1809,  Jonathan  Trumbull 
1809-11,  John  Treadwell. 
1811-13,  Roger  Griswold. 
1813-17,  John  Cotton  Smith. 
1817-27,  Oliver  Wolcott. 
1827-31,  Gideon  Tomlinson. 
1831-33,  John  S.  Peters. 
1833-34,  H.  W.  Edwards. 


420 


CONNECTICUT. 


1834-35,  Samuel  A.  Foote. 
1835-38,  H.  W.  Edwards. 
1838-42,  W.  W.  Ellsworth. 
1842-44,  C.  F.  Cleveland. 
1844-46,  Roger  S.  Baldwin. 
1846-49,  Clark  Bissell. 
1849-50,  Joseph  Trumbull. 
1850-54,  Thomas  H.  Seymour. 
1854-55,  Henry  Button. 
1855-57,  W.  T.  Minor. 
1857-58,  A.  H.  Holley. 
1858-66,  W.  A.  Buckingham. 
1866-67,  Joseph  R.  Hawley. 
1867-69,  James  E.  English. 
1869-70,  Marshall  Jewell. 
1870-71,  James  E.  English. 


1871-73,  MarshallJewell. 
1873-76,  Charles  R.  IngersolJ. 
1876-79,  R.  D.  Hubbard. 
1879-81,  Charles  B.  Andrews. 
1881-83,  H.  B.  Bigelow. 
1883-85,  Thomas  M.  Waller. 
1885-87,  Henry  B.  Harrison. 
1887-89,  Phineas  T.  Lounsbury. 
1889-93,  Morgan  G.  Bulkeley. 
1893-95,  Luzon  B.  Morris. 
1895-97.  O.  Vincent  Coffin. 
1897-99,  Lorrin  A.  Cooke. 
1899-1901,  George   E.  Louns- 

bury. 
1901-03,  George  P.  McLean. 
1903-05,  Abiram  Chamberlain. 


INDEX. 


Abercrombie,  Gen.  Jamea,  261. 

Adams,  Prof.  H.  B.,  135. 

Agawam,  50. 

Agriculture,  3,  330,  338,  342,  357,  368, 
38t>  394-398. 

Albany,  N.  Y.',  251,  259,  276. 

Allen,  Ethan,  272,  283. 

Allyn,  John,  81,  IGO,  202,  2G6. 

Alsop,  Richard,  340. 

Andrew,  Samuel,  340. 

Andrews,  William,  92. 

Andros,  Sir  Edmund,  125 ;  at  Say- 
brook,  194,  195  ;  in  New  York,  197  ; 
in  Connecticut,  199  ;  at  Hartford, 
200;  supports  Rhode  Island,  213; 
downfall,  203. 

Annapolis  Convention,  318. 

Ansonia,  358. 

Argal,  Captain,  146. 

Arnold,  Benedict,  40,  292,  303;  at 
New  London,  312,  314. 

AspinwaU,  Dr.  William,  342. 

Assistants,  in  Massachusetts,  65  foil., 
386  ;  in  Connecticut,  172,  190,  269. 

Atherton  Company,  211,  214. 

Bacon,  Dr.  Leonard,  98. 
Ballot,  the,  77. 
Bangs,  Dr.  Nathan,  356. 
Banks,  338,  368. 
Baptism,  225. 
Baptists,  the,  236. 
Barbadoes,  207. 
"  Battle  of  the  Kegs,"  297. 
Beach,  Rev.  John,  302. 
Beach,  Dr.  Jolm  W.,  356. 
Belcher,  Gov.  Jonathan,  300. 
Bellows'  Falls,  299. 
Berkeley,  Bisliop,  242. 
Berlin,  357,  358. 
Birge,  Gen.  H.  W.,  381. 
Birmingham,  361. 
Blake,  Admiral,  165. 
Block  Island,  31. 
Blok,  Adrian,  7. 
"  Blue  Laws,"  105. 


Blue-lights,  350. 

Boroughs,  337. 

Boston,  84,  116,  203,  266,  288,  292. 

Boteler,  Lady  Alice,  112,  117. 

Boundaries  :  disputes,  114  ;  with  the 
Dutch,  148;  under  the  charter,  168, 
173,  273  ;  with  New  York,  193,  205, 
207  ;  with  Massachusetts,  207,  209, 
271  ;  with  Rhode  Island,  209  foU. 

Brainard,  J.  G.  C,  340. 

Brandt,  278. 

Branford,  admission  to  New  Haven, 
106 ;  settlement,  138 ;  meeting  at, 
239. 

Brass,  361  foil. 

Bridgeport,  337.  359. 

Brorafield,  Major,  313. 

Brooke,  Lord,  8, 1 10,  168. 

Brotherton  tribe,  the,  54,  55. 

Brownell,  Bishop,  355. 

Buckingham,  Gov.  Wm.  A.,  376. 

Buildings,  124. 

Bull,  Captain  Thomas,  194,  195,  251. 

Bull  Run,  378-9,  382. 

Bunker  Hill,  292. 

Bushnell,  David,  296. 

Butler,  John,  278. 

Cabots,  the,  7,  11,  145. 

Capital  city,  174, 270,  354. 

Cambridge,  Mass.,  60. 

Cambridge  platform,  the,  226. 

Canonchet,  28,  53. 

Canterbury,  370. 

Carlisle  Grant,  the,  8. 

Carthagena  expedition,  the,  256. 

Cassasinamon,  51. 

Cemeteries,  340. 

Charter,  tlie,  170  foil.,  199,  201,  20^ 

204,  M7,  356. 
Charter  Oak,  the,  25,  123,  200,  204. 
Chase,  Bishop,  351. 
Chauncey,  Nathanael,  240. 
Cheevers,  Ezekiel,  92. 
Cheneys,  the,  342. 
Cheshire,  355. 


422 


INDEX. 


Chipmans,  the,  2T2. 

Chittenden,  Gov.  ThomaB,  272. 

Choate,  Riifus,  209. 

Church  and  commonwealth,  77,  221, 
22-t,  228,  232,  233,  347,  354-355. 

Church  and  town,  6,  59,  220,  224,  229, 
236,  268. 

Church  of  England,  the,  235, 236,  242  ; 
in  the  Revolution,  302 ;  after  the 
Revolution,  346 ;  in  1818,  352. 

Cincinnati,  the  Society  of  the,  317. 

Cities,  337,  338. 

Clap,  Pres.  Thomas,  243. 

Clocks,  359  foil. 

Coal,  345,  358. 

Colt,  Samuel,  363. 

Commerce,  339. 

Common  lauds,  95,  97. 

Confederation,  articles  of,  315. 

Congregational  Church,  the,  60,  222, 
230,  345 ;  see  Establishment,  the. 

Congress,  320  foil. 

Congressmen,  election  of,  333. 

Connecticut,  position  and  boundaries, 
1 ;  area,  2;  products,  3  ;  harbors,  4; 
granted  to  Plymouth  Company,  7; 
title,  8,  11  ;  commonwealth  of,  12 ; 
settlement,  20 ;  constitution,  63  ; 
seal,  73  ;  motto,  74  ;  territorial 
claims,  102  ;  social  conditions,  128  ; 
colonial  policy,  129,  280;  regicides 
in,  165  ;  charter,  lC6foll.,  285;  the 
Andros  episode,  199  ;  in  1680,  265; 
population,  270  ;  final  territory,  281  ; 
in  the  Revolution,  204,  310  ;  becomes 
a  State,  3(>4  ;  influence  in  forming 
the  constitution,  320  foil.,  386 ;  in- 
dustrial development,  328  foil.; 
politics,  345,  369  foil.  ;  in  the  war 
of  1812, 349  foil.  ;  in  the  war  for  the 
Union,  374  foil.;  recent  economic 
development,  385-398  ;  preemi- 
nence in  manufacturing,  386-393 ; 
physical  resources,  389  ;  labor  con- 
ditions, 390;  inventions,  390,  301  ; 
foreign-born  population,  391  ;  fac- 
tory organization,  392  ;  insurance 
companies,  393  ;  agricultural  de- 
pression, 394-3'.iG  ;  change  in  agri- 
cultural conditions,  396-398 ;  in- 
crease in  urban  population,  308 : 
town  government,  399;  municipal 
expenditure,  399  ;  deadlock  in  the 
legislature,  400,  401  ;  inequalities 
in  representation,  401-406  ;  evils 
in  present  system  of  representa- 
tion, 403  ;  Constitutional  Conven- 
tion, 404  ;  new  system  of  apportion- 
ment, 404,  405  ;  plan  disapproved, 
405. 


Connecticut  River,  the,  2, 7,  8, 17,  23, 
272,  358  ;  imposts,  115,  143,  153. 

Constables,  78,  79,  135,  174,  180,  181, 
210,  268,  335. 

Constitution  of  the  United  States,  the, 
319  foil. 

Constitution  of  1C39,  adopted,  63 ; 
origin,  73;  provisions,  74  and  Ai>- 
pendix  ;  democratic  nature,  79. 

Constitution  of  1818,  337,  353,  357. 

Convention  of  1787,  the,  319  foil. 

Copper,   3,  3U0. 

Cornbury,  Edward  Hyde,  Lord,  253. 

Corporation  Act,  tlie,  367. 

Cotton,  John,  17,  65,  69. 

Cotton-gin,  tlie,  363. 

Couch,  Gen.  D.  N.,  381. 

Council,  the,  269,  332. 

Counties,  ISO,  190. 

Country  pay,  249. 

Courts,  57,  190,  354  ;  in  New  Haven, 
93,  104. 

Covenant,  owning  the,  227. 

Crandall,  Prudence,  370. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  154,  155,  164. 

"  Cuba,"  the,  299. 

Cummiugs,  Dr.  Joseph,  356. 

Cutler,  Rev.  Timothy,  242. 

Dagoett,  Rev.  Naphtali,  244. 

Danbury,  303. 

Darley,  Henry,  110. 

Dartmouth  College,  55. 

Davenport,  Rev.  John,  82,  92,  221  ; 
his  "  fundamental  orders,"  90  ;  re- 
moval to  Boston,  160  ;  deahngs  with 
tlie  regicides,  164 ;  on  the  union 
with  Connecticut,  175  foil. ;  pro- 
posal of  a  college,  239. 

Day,  Pres.  Jeremiah,  245. 

Deane,  Silas,  291. 

Debt,  369. 

Decatur,  Commodore  Stephen,  350. 

Delaware  Company,  formed,  146;  iaM- 
ure,  147. 

Democracy  in  Massachusetts,  64,  132 ; 
in  Connecticut,  G3,  70,  77,  79,  141, 
205,  2.0,  226,  261,  318,  356,  366. 

Democratic  party,  345-348,  352,  353, 
369. 

Deputies,  76,  80,  172,  268. 

Derby,  267,  343,  361 . 

Dissenters,  231,  234,  238,  346,  347,352. 

Dixon,  Jeremiah,  92. 

Dongan,  Gov.  Thomas,  199,  205. 

Dorchester,  17,  24. 

Dudley,  Joseph,  199,  218,  253. 

Dummer,  Fort,  271. 

Dutch,  the,  in  Connecticut,  7,  14,  16, 
21,  23,  30,51  ;  fort  at  Hartford,  122, 


INDEX. 


423 


148, 154 ;  intercourse  with  New  Eng- 
land, 144  ;  treaty  of  Hartford,  148  ; 
conquered,  188,  193,  260, 

Dutch  West  ludia  Company,  the,  145, 
147. 

Dwight,  Theodore,  340. 

Dwight,  Pres.  Timothy,  232. 

Dwight,  Pres.  Timothy,  246. 

East  Hampton,  L.  I.,  135,  138. 

Eaton,  Rev.  Samuel,  88. 

Eaton,  Theophilus,  84,  92, 138  ;  house, 
8"J ;  "magistrate,"  93;  governor, 
103 ;  death,  158  ;  family,  159. 

Ecclesiastical  affairs,  220  foil. 

Edwards,  Pierpont,  338. 

Edwards,  Rev.  Jonathan,  232. 

Election  laws,  77,  332,  354. 

Election  sermon,  334. 

Eliot,  John,  HI,  54. 

Eliot,  Dr.  Samuel,  355. 

Ellsworth,  Col.  E.  E.,  381. 

EUsworth,  Oliver,  319,  .325,  327. 

Endicott,  John,  32. 

Episcopal  Church  (see  Church  of  Eng- 
land). 

Establishment,  the,  231,  234,  237,  345, 
347. 

Fairfield,  20,  44,  135,  308. 

Farmington,  135. 

Feake,  Robert,  150. 

Federal  party,  345-346,  350,  352. 

Feldspar,  4. 

Fenwick,   George,   8,   110  ;  comes  to 

Saybrook,  112  ;  commissioner,  113  ; 

sells  Saybrook,  115;  death,  117. 
Ferry,  Gen.  O.  S.,  381. 
Financial  affairs,  248  foil. 
Fire-arms,  3C3-3()4. 
"  Fire  Lands,"  282,  309. 
Fish,  5. 

Fisher's  Island,  140,  207. 
Fitch,  Rev.  James,  54,  113,  218. 
Fitch,  John,  12C. 
Fitch,  Gov.  Thomas,  287. 
Five  Nations,  the,  27. 
Fletcher,  Gov.  Benjamin,  195,  204. 
Foote,  Admiral  A.  H.,  381. 
"  Forty  Fort,"  277. 
Foss,  Dr.  Cyrus,  356. 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  259,  286,  325. 
Free  burgesses,  91,  103. 
Free  planters,  80,  91,  92,  103,  177. 
French  in  Connecticut,  the,  312. 
French  wars,  250  foil. 
Fugill,  Thomas,  92. 

Gallop,  John,  31. 
Gardiner,  Lyon,  33,  112. 


Garret,  Hermon,  51. 

Garrison,  W.  L.,  370. 

General  Assembly,  269,  290,  354,  373, 
401-102,  404. 

General  Court,  34,  57,  58,  75,  78 ;  (see 
General  Assembly). 

General  election,  333. 

George,  battle  of  Lake,  259. 

Gilbert,  Matthew,  92. 

Goddard,  Calvin,  351. 

Goffe,  William,  163  foil. 

Gold,  4. 

Gold,  Nathan,  80. 

Goodrich,  Chauncey,  351. 

Goodrich,  Elizur,  346. 

Goodwin,  Dr.  D.  R.,  355. 

Goodwin,  William,  123,  228. 

Goodyear,  Charles,  364. 

Goodyear,  Steplien,  102,  103. 

Gookin,  Daniel,  54. 

Gorges  grant,  8. 

Governor,  election  of,  76,  77  ;  reelec- 
tion, 77;   in  New  Haven,  93,  104. 

Granby  coppers,  3,  300. 

Grant,  Gen.  U.  S.,  381. 

Greenfield  Hill,  44. 

Green's  Farms,  308. 

Greenwich,  150. 

Gregory,  Commodore  P.  H.,  381. 

Griswold,  Fort,  312,313. 

Griswold,  Gov.  Roger,  349. 

Groton,  37,  52. 

Guilford,  43;  origin,  83;  people,  84; 
purchase,  87;  settlement,  88;  or- 
ganization, 93. 

HArDAM,  267. 

Hadley,  Mass,  164,  228. 

Hale,  Rev.  E.  E.,  367. 

Hale,  Captain  Nathan,  295. 

Halfway  Covenant,  the,  227. 

H.imilton  grant,  the,  8,  9,  215,  216. 

Hammond,  Gov.  James  H.,  375. 

Hampshire  grants,  the,  272. 

Hardware,  357. 

Harland,  Gen.  Edward,  381. 

Hartford,  6,  7,  11,  15,  22,  34,  65 ;  de- 
mocracy in,  73;  town  clerks,  81; 
early  topography,  120;  treaty  of, 
148;  made  the  capital,  174  ;  church, 
223,  224 ;  city,  3,37,  338,  340,  341 ; 
manufactures,  358  foil. 

Hartford  wits,  the,  340,  341 . 

Hartford  Convention,  the,  350-352. 

Harvard  College,  2,39. 

Hasselrine,  Sir  Arthur,  110. 

Havana,  2G3. 

Hawley,  Gen.  J.  R.,  381. 

Ha3-nes,  John,  18,  21,  80,  123 ;  death, 
158. 


424 


INDEX. 


Haynes,  Rev.  Joseph,  228. 

Hazard,  Sumuel,  276. 

Hempstead,  L.  I.,  139. 

Hillliouse,  James,  282,  351. 

Hillhouse,  William,  82. 

Hinsdale,  Theodore,  3G7. 

Hitchcock,  Commodore  R.  B.,  381. 

Holland,  145,  164,  193. 

Holmes,  William,  15. 

Hooker,  Rev.  Thomas,  18,  299;  letter 

to  Winthrop,  58,  70;  democracy,  69, 

73  ;  sermon  of  1638,  72;  house,  123 ; 

death,  158;  influence,  221,  321,  322, 

365. 
Hopkins,  Edward,  80, 114,  123;  death, 

158. 
Hopkins  grammar  schools,  158. 
Hopkins,  Lemuel,  340. 
Hopkinson,  Francis,  297. 
Horse  brand,  269. 
Horse  Neck,  30G. 
Howe,  George,  Lord,  261. 
Howe,  John  J.,  360. 
Hudson,  Henry,  145. 
Hull,  Captain  Isaac,  339. 
Humphreys,  David,  340,  343. 
Humphreysville,  343. 
Huntington,  Gov.  Samuel,  326. 
Huntington,    Long  Island,   107,   135, 

138. 
Hutchinson,  Gov.  Thomas,  66. 
Hutchinson,  Mrs.  Anne,  51,  84. 

Indian  tribes,  26. 

Industrial  development,  328  foil. 

Ingersoll,  Jared,  286. 

IngersoU,  Jared,  352. 

Insurance,  338,  368,  393. 

Interlopers,  339. 

Iowa,  11. 

Iron,  3,  343-345,  358. 

Jackson,  Dr.  Abner,  355. 
Jefferson,  Thomas,  80,  345,  346. 
Jerome,  Chauncey,  359. 
Jesup,  Col.  T.  S.  351. 
Johnson,  Sir  William,  259. 
Johnson,  WilUara  S.,  319,  327. 
Judges'  Cave,  the,  164. 
Jury,  trial  by,  189. 

Kerfoot,  Dr.  J.  B.,  355. 
Kieft,  Gov.  William,  146. 
Killingworth,  240. 
King  Philip's  war,  196. 
King's  Province,  211. 
Kingston,  Pa.,  277. 
Kingston,  R.  I.,  212,  213. 
Knight,  Mrs.,  249. 
Knox,  Oen.  Henry,  318. 


Labob  Bureau,  Connecticut,  365. 
Laud,  75,  95;   in  New  Hampshire,  94; 

individual  ownership  of,  96. 
Laud,  83,  108. 

Law,  Gov.  Jonathan,  81,  342. 
Lawrence,  Henry,  110. 
Lead,  3. 
Ledyard,  52. 

Ledyard,  Col.  WiUiam,  312,  313. 
Lee,  Gen.  Charles.  294. 
Leete,  Gov.  William,  102, 162, 183, 189. 
Leffingwell,  Thomas,  113. 
Legal  tender,  254,  257,  258. 
Legislature,  57(see  General  Assembly). 
Leisler,  251. 
Lexington,  291. 
Liberty,  Sons  of,  97. 
Limestone,  4. 
Limited  Liability,  367. 
London  Company,  7. 
Long  Island,  2,  137,  148, 168;  becomes 

a  part  of  New  York,  188, 194;  in  the 

Revolution,  311. 
Long  Wharf,  the,  339. 
Loomis,  James  C,  376. 
Loudoun,  the  Earl  of,  261. 
Louisburg,  258,  262. 
Ludlow,  Roger,  18,  19,  56,  80,  154. 
Luzerne  county,  284. 
Lyman,  General  Phineas,  260,  262. 
Lyme,  207. 
Lynn,  Mass.,  137. 
Lyon,  General  Nathaniel,  381. 

McFiNGAL,  288. 

Mackintosh,  Sir  James,  106. 

Madison,  James,  325. 

Magistrates,  70,  7G,  77 ;  mode  of  eleo 
tion,  78;   in  New  Haven,  93. 

Malbon,  Richard,  92. 

Manchester,  342. 

Mansfield,  342. 

Mansfield,  Gen.  J.  K.  F.,  381. 

Manufactures,  343,  345,  352,  357  foil. 
386-303. 

Marble,  4. 

Mason,  John,  34,  113,  172,  216. 

Massachusetts  Bay,  14,  17,  18,  61; 
democracy  in,  64,  65;  charter,  65, 
67,  131,  198;  laws,  69;  relations 
with  Connecticut,  129;  relations  to 
the  New  England  Union,  142-152; 
boimdary  disputes,  207,  271;  in  the 
Revolution,  288. 

Maverick,  Rev.  John,  18,  19. 

Mayflower,  the,  63. 

Mechanics,  357  foU.,  361  foil.,  374  foil., 
386  foil. 

Meigs,  Col.  Return  J.,  304. 

Meriden,  337,  358. 


INDEX. 


425 


Methodist  Church,  237,  352. 
Miantonomoh,  28,  36,  47,  48,  50. 
Middletown,  2,  135,  136,  337,  355. 
Milborn,  252. 
Milford,  83,  240;  origin,  83;   people, 

84  ;   purcliase,  87;    Battlement,  88; 

orgrinization,  93j  burgesses,  103. 
Militia,  375. 
Mohawks,  27. 
Mohegan,  29. 
Mohegans,  53,  216. 
Moinaugin,  87. 
Money,  248. 
Monk,  Gen.,  163. 
Mononotto,  43,  46. 
Montowese,  87. 
Montreal,  253. 
Montville,  54. 
Morris,  Luzon  B.,  400. 
Mower,  Gen.  Jos.  A.,  381. 
Mules,  331. 

Nails,  3. 

Narragansett  Bay,  14,  173,  210. 

Narragansett  Indians,  28,  32,  46,  51, 
53,  212. 

Naugatuck  River,  358. 

Navigation  Act,  155. 

Neptune,  the,  339. 

New  Amsterdam,  14 ;  becomes  New 
York  city,  188. 

Newark,  N.  J.,  107,  138. 

New  Britain,  358. 

New  Connecticut,  273. 

New  England,  1. 

New  England  Union,  102,  114,  116, 
143  ;  difficulties  with  the  Dutch,  147, 
152  ;  nullification  by  Massachusetts, 
157  ;  failure,  132,  157. 

Newgate,  301. 

New  Hampshire,  271. 

New  Haven,  2,  5,  10,  26,  61  ;  origin, 
83  ;  people,  84  ;  settlement,  80  ;  pur- 
chase, 87  ;  early  topography,  88  ; 
covenant,  89  ;  constitution,  90  ;  leg- 
islation, 98;  name,  101  ;  confedera- 
tion, 102;  organization,  103;  enters 
New  England  Union,  104  ;  the  Dela- 
ware venture,  140 ;  phantom  ship, 
155;  proposal  to  migrate,  150;  the 
regicides,  103 ;  proclaims  Charles 
II.,  107  ;  included  in  Connecticut 
charter,  173 ;  resists,  175 ;  weak- 
ness, 175  foil.  ;  yields,  188,  189 ; 
Yale  at,  2U  ;  British  at,  244,  308; 
capital ,  270 ;  city,  337 -.340  ;  em- 
bargo, 340  ;  convention,  348  ;  manu- 
factures, 358 ;  proposed  negro  col- 
lege, 370 ;  representation  in  legisla- 
ture, 402. 


"  New  lights,"  233,  236. 

New  London,  5,  40,  135, 140,  337, 349 ; 

Arnold's  raid,  312. 
Newman,  Robert,  92. 
New  Milford,  357. 
New  tenor,  250. 
Newtovni  (Cambridge),  17. 
New  York,   193,  197,  205,   207,   282; 

boundary,  272  ;  in  the  Revolution, 

293,  303,  300  ;  in  the  confederation, 

316,  318. 
New  York  city,  127,  188. 
Northampton,  Mass.,  232. 
Norwalk,  135,  136,  223,  309. 
Norwich,  48,  113,  135,  141,  217,  337, 

358. 
"  Notions,"  357. 
Nullification,  the  first,  157. 

OccoM,  Samson,  55. 

Ohio,  127. 

Oldham,  John,  17,  31. 

Old  tenor,  250. 

Olin,  Dr.  Stephen,  356. 

Owning  the  covenant,  227. 

Palmeb,  Nathan,  307. 

Paper  currency,  250  foil. 

Parsons,  J.  C,  127. 

Patents,  302,  308. 

Patrick,  Capt.,  30,  42,  45,  150. 

Pawcatuck  River,  the,  210,  213. 

Peace  party,  the,  378. 

Peage,  248. 

Peddlers,  3,57. 

Peekskill,  N.  Y.,  306. 

•'  Pelham,"  350. 

Penn,  William,  274. 

Pennamites  and  Yankeeo,  283. 

Pennsylvania,  127,  273,  274,  284  (see 
Wyoming). 

Pequot  country,  the,  3,  59,  139,  209. 

Pequot  Hill,  37. 

Pequot  war,  the,  34  foil. 

Pequots,  the,  10,  28,  32,  42,  46,  52, 
209. 

Percival,  J.  G.,  340. 

Peters,  Gov.  John  S.,  310. 

Peters,  Rev.  Samuel,  105  ;  his  "  His- 
tory," 298  ;  his  "  natural  "  history, 
299  ;  returns  to  Connecticut,  310  ; 
death.  310. 

Peters,  Rev.  Thomas,  113. 

Phiiadelphia,  274. 

Philip's  war,  King,  196. 

Phillips,  Rev.  George,  18,  19. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  19. 

Pierson,  Rev.  Abraham,  54,  107,  138. 

Pierson,  Rev.  Abraham,  240. 

Pillars,  the  seven,  90,  92. 


426 


INDEX. 


Pins,  361. 

Pitkin,  Gov.  William,  287. 

Pitt,  William,  2G1. 

Plainfield,  267,  269. 

Plymouth  colony,  the,  14,  16  ;  demo- 
cracy, 63. 

Plymouth  Company,  the,  6,  7,  8,  137, 
215. 

Pomfret,  261,  307. 

Ponderson,  John,  92. 

Population,  270,  329,  330,  367,  391, 
398. 

Porter,  Pres.  Noah,  245. 

Port  Royal,  253. 

Presbyterianism,  230,  232. 

Prices,  regulation  of,  100. 

Prison-ships,  298. 

Probate  courts,  75,  336. 

Proclamation  money,  258. 

Proprietors,  97. 

Prudden,  Rev.  Peter,  88. 

Puritans,  the,  387. 

Putnam,  Gen.  Israel,  261,  263,  292, 
306,  307. 

Pynchon,  Dr.  I.  R.,  355. 

Pynchon,  WiUiam,  18. 

QuAKEES,  the,  175,  236. 
Quebec,  253,  262. 
Quinnipiack,  85. 
Quo  warranto,  199. 

Raileoads,  368. 

Randolph,  Edward,  198,  211. 

Randolph,  John,  331. 

Rasieres,  De,  14. 

Rates,  137. 

Reading,  302,  306. 

Regicides,  the,  163  foil. 

Republican  party,  the,  369. 

Reserve,  the  Western,  127,  282,  315. 

Revolver,  the,  363. 

Rhode  Island,  209  foil.,  317. 

Richmond  grant,  the,  8. 

Ridgefield,  :>04. 

Rivington,  James,  293. 

Roads,  125. 

Rogers,  Commodore  C.  R.  P.,  381. 

Rogers,  Commodore  John,  381. 

Rossiter,  Bray,  178. 

Rossiter,  John,  178. 

Roxbury,  18. 

Ruj'ter,  Admiral  de,  155. 

Sachem's  Head,  44. 
Saffery,  207. 
Salem,  Mass.,  261. 
Salisbury,  344. 

Saltonstall,  Gov.  Gurdon,  80. 
^tonstall.  Sir  Richard,  110. 


Sandemanians,  the,  346. 

Sassacus,  29,  30,  32,  46. 

Saugatuck,  303. 

Say  and  Sele  grant,  the,  8,  9,  23, 109, 
168. 

Saybrook,  2, '23,  33,  135,  240,  349; 
name,  112 ;  sold  to  Connecticut, 
115  ;  Commencement  at,  242. 

Saybrook  platform,  the,  231  foil,, 
237. 

Schenectady,  N.  T.,  251. 

Schools,  101,  267,  282,  328,  369. 

Seabury,  Bishop,  238. 

Sears,  Isaac,  293. 

Sedgwick,  Gen.  John,  381. 

Selden,  John,  79. 

Selectmen,  76,  238,  332,  335,  354. 

Senate,  77,  354  ;  of  the  United  States, 
326. 

Sequin,  33. 

Sharp's  rifle,  364. 

Sheep,  342,  343. 

Sherman,  Roger,  319,  324,  327,  357. 

Sherman,  Roger  Minot,  351. 

Sherman,  Gen.  W.  T.,  381. 

Sigoumey,  Mrs.  L.  H.,  340. 

Silk,  342. 

Silver,  4. 

Simsbury,  3,  267,  300. 

Six  Nations,  the,  27. 

Slaves,  267. 

SUtting-mill,  344. 

Smith,  Dr.  A.  W.,  3,56. 

Smith,  Dr.  G.  W.,  355. 

Smith,  Gov.  John  Cotton,  356. 

Smith,  Nathaniel,  351. 

Society,  church  and,  60. 

Somers,  John,  204. 

"  Sons  of  Liberty,"  97,  286. 

Southampton,  L.  I.,  135,  138,  223. 

Southerton,  210. 

South  Norwalk,  337. 

Southold,  L.  I.,  purchased,  88  ;  ad- 
mission to  New  Haven,  106,  138; 
feeling  in,  179. 

"  Sow  business,"  the,  68. 

Specie,  250. 

Silencer,  Gen.  Joseph,  292. 

Springfield,  founded,  20,  25,  56;  be- 
comes a  Massachusetts  town,  58, 
143,  208. 

Stamford,  purchased,  87  ;  feeling  in, 
179. 

Stamp  Act,  the,  285  foU. 

"  Stand-up  Law,"  the,  353. 

State  prison,  the,  300. 

State  sovereignty,  304,  305,  315,  316, 
323. 

Stedman,  Gen.  G.  A.,  381. 

Steinwehr,  Gen.  A.  von,  381. 


INDEX. 


42T 


StUes,  Pres.  Ezra,  245,  SJi,  342,  346. 

Stirling  grant,  the,  137. 

Stone,  Capt.,  30. 

Stone,  Rev.  Samuel,  18,  19,  35,  123, 

228. 
Stonington,  37,  210,  293,  297,  349. 
Story,  Judge,  06. 
Stoughton,  William,  42. 
Stratford,  laS,  235,  237. 
Strong,  Kev.  Nathan,  341. 
Stuyvesant,  Gov.  Peter,  147,  151,  185. 
Suftrage,  60,  75,   173,  174,  224,   226, 

332,  353,  364  ;  in  New  Haven,   91, 

220  i  in  Massachusetts,  66. 
Susquehanna  Company,  the,  275,  283. 
Swamp  fight,  the,  196,  212. 
Swift,  Zephaniah,  351. 

Talcott,  John,  57. 

Talcott,  Joseph,  80. 

Tatobam,  29. 

Taxation,  78 ;  in  kind,  100,  249,  369  ; 
lists,  136,  137,  267,  368;  church, 
224,  229,  231,  237,  354  ;  and  paper 
currency,  254  foil. 

Tennant,  Rev.  Gilbert,  232. 

Terry,  Eli,  359. 

Terry,  Gen.  A.  H.,  381. 

Thames  River,  the,  .5,  35. 

Ticonderoga,  262,  291. 

Tinware,  .357. 

Tobacco  culture,  398. 

Toleration  party,  the,  352,  353. 

Tories,  97,  298,  300,  302,  309,  310,  346. 

Totten,  Dr.  Silas,  355. 

"  Town-born,"  339. 

Township,  the,  220,  268. 

Town-system,  the,  6, 12, 58,  61,  75,  79, 
1.34,  135,  192,  268, 290,  305  ;  in  Mas- 
sachusetts, 66,  67  ;  in  New  Haven, 
84,  102,  177  ;  in  Vermont,  272  ;  in 
Pennsylvania,  278. 

Tracy,  Uriah,  331. 

Treadwell,  John,  351. 

Treat,  Gov.  Robert,  196,  199-201. 

Treby,  204. 

Trmity  College,  355. 

Trumbull,  Benjamin,  288. 

Trumbull,  Fort,  312. 

Trumbull,  H.  C,  288. 

Trumbull,  J.  H.,  71,  288. 

Trumbull,  John,  287. 

Trumbull,  John,  288,  340. 

Trumbull,  Gov.  Jonathan,  286,  294. 

Trumbull,  Gov.  Jonathan,  81,  287. 

Trumbull,  Lyman,  288. 

Tryon,  Gov.  William,  303,  307,  309. 

Turner,  Nathaniel,  92,  94. 

Tyler,  Gen.  Daniel,  381. 

Tyler,  Gen.  R.  O.,  381. 


Uncas,  29,  35,  46,  53,  217. 

Underbill,  Captain  John,  38. 

Union,  the  American,  02,  263. 

Union,  the  New  England,  102,  114, 
116, 143 ;  diflBculties  with  the  Dutch, 
147,  152;  nullification  by  Massachu- 
setts, 157  ;  faUure,  132, 157. 

United  colonies,  the,  49. 

Utica,  N.  Y.,  274. 

Van  Corlbae,  John,  15. 
Vane,  Gov.  Harry,  32,  33. 
Van  Tromp,  Admiral,  155. 
Van  Twiller,  Gov.  Walter,  16. 
Vermont,  127,  136,  271,  273,  291. 
Vernon,  Admiral,  256. 
Virginia,  280,  315,  320,  323. 

Wadswoeth,  Captain  Joseph,  195,  201. 

Walker,  Admiral  Hovenden,  253. 

Wallingford,  267. 

Wampum,  248. 

Ward,  204. 

Warham,  Rev.  John,  18,  19. 

Wars,  250  foil. 

Warwick  grant,  8,  9,  109,  115,  118. 

Warwick  Neck,  214. 

Washington  College,  355. 

Washington,  George,  294, 295, 311, 317, 
343. 

Waterbury,  267,  337,  358,  369. 

Water  power,  300, 

Watertown,  17. 

Webb,  Gen.,  261. 

Webster,  Gov.  John,  228. 

Welles,  Gideon,  381. 

Wells,  Thomas,  80. 

Wentworth,  Gov.  Benning,  272. 

Wentworth,  Strafiford,  Earl  of,  108, 
115. 

Wesleyan  University,  355. 

Westchester,  180. 

Western  Reserve,  the,  127,  282,  315. 

West  Haven,  308. 

Westmoreland,  277,  279. 

West  Point,  N.  Y.,  306. 

Wethersfield,  11,  21,  22,  33,66,312, 
dissensions  in,  93,  134,  164,  223 ; 
Commencement  at,  242 ;  State  pri- 
son, 301 . 

Whalley,  Edward,  163  foil. 

"  Whapperknocker,"  the,-  299. 

Wharf,  the  Long,  339. 

Wheaton.  Dr.,  355. 

Wheelock,  Ebenezer,  55. 

Whitefleld,  Rev.  Henry,  88. 

Whitefield,  Rev.  Henry,  232,  234. 

Whiting,  John,  81. 

Whiting,  Joseph,  81. 

Whiting,  Rev  Joseph,  228. 


428 


INDEX. 


Whiting,  Nathan,  260. 

Whitney,  Eli,  363. 

Whitneyville,  363. 

Wicliford,  R.  I.,  185,  210. 

Wigglesworth,  Rev.  Michael,  228. 

William  and  Mary,  208,  251. 

Williams,  Rev.  Elisha,  242. 

Williams,  Dr.  John,  355. 

Williams,  Roger,  32. 

Wilson,  James,  326. 

Winchester  Arms  Co.,  364. 

(Vindham,  299. 

Windsor,  11,  15,  22,  25,  56. 

Winslow,  Gov.  Edward,  14. 

Winthrop,  Fitz  John,  160,  202,  204, 
252. 

Winthrop,  Jr.,  John,  8,  23,  77,80, 110, 
343 ;  at  Pequot,  140  ;  governor,  160  ; 
sent  to  England,  166 ;  obtains  a 
charter,  177  foil.,  210. 

Winthrop,  Sr.,  John,  14,  58,110;  let- 
ter to  Hooker,  66. 

Winthrop,  Theodore,  380. 

Winthrop,  Wait,  202. 


Wolcott,  Henry,  158. 

Wolcott,  Jr.,  Henry,  71. 

Wolcott,  Oliver,  294. 

Wolcott,  Oliver,  362. 

Wolfe,  Gen.  James,  261. 

Wood,  John,  245. 

Woodbury,  267. 

Woodward,  207. 

Wool,  342,  343. 

Woolsey,  Pres.  T.  D.,  245. 

Wooster,  Gen.  David,  292,  303,  304. 

Wyllys  Family,  the,  123,  161,  201. 

Wyllys,  George,  81. 

Wyllys,  Hezekiah,  81. 

Wyllys,  Samuel,  81. 

Wyoming,  migration  to,  127  ;  settle- 
ment, 275  foil.;  massacre,  278; 
failure,  279. 

Tale  College,  101,  238  foil ;  Univer- 
sity, 247. 
Tale,  David,  158. 
Tale,  Elihu,  241. 
"  Tankee  Notions,"  357. 


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